Django form/database error: value too long for type character varying(4)

Question

I'm trying to save a stripe (the billing service) company id [around 200 characters or so] to my database in Django.

The specific error is:

database error: value too long for type character varying(4)

How can I enable Django to allow for longer values?

I saw: value too long for type character varying(N) and: Django fixture fails, stating "DatabaseError: value too long for type character varying(50)"

• my database is already encoded for UTF-8, according to my webhost.

• EDIT : I see that one answer recommends making the column wider. Does that involve modifying the PostgreSQL database?

My specific system is Webfaction, CentOs shared machine, Django running on PostgreSQL. I would really appreciate a conceptual overview of what's going on and how I can fix it.

Answer 1

Yes, make the column wider. The error message is quite clear: your 200 characters are too big to fit in a varchar(4).

First, update your model fields max_length attribute from 4 to a number that you expect will be long enough to contain the data you're feeding it.

Next up you have to update the database column itself as django will not automatically update existing columns.

Here are a few options:

1: Drop the database and run syncdb again. Warning: you will lose all your data.

2: Manually update the column via SQL:

Type in python manage.py dbshell to get into your database shell and type in

ALTER TABLE my_table ALTER COLUMN my_column TYPE VARCHAR(200)

3: Learn and use a database migration tool like django south which will help keep your database updated with your model code.