Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

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Chuckster555sf
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Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by Chuckster555sf »

For instance, can I just make a post go on forever? Like this?:

.........
.
.
.
.
.
.

..
.
..
.
.
.
.

etc. until the scroll bar is tiny.
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advocatus
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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by advocatus »

Default is 60,000 characters.
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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by Marshalrusty »

The fundamental limitation is the maximum length of the type of field used in the database to store the post.

For a 'text' field, that is 64kB in MySQL, which is 65535 single byte characters. I'm not entirely sure whether phpBB checks for some slightly smaller number to account for some metadata, but it's going to be around there.

EDIT: Looks like we use 'mediumtext', which is quite a bit larger at 16 Megabytes. There is, however, a check for this in message_parser.php:

Code: Select all

		// Maximum message length check. 0 disables this check completely.
		if ((int) $config['max_' . $mode . '_chars'] > 0 && $message_length > (int) $config['max_' . $mode . '_chars'])
		{
			$this->warn_msg[] = $user->lang('CHARS_' . strtoupper($mode) . '_CONTAINS', $message_length) . '<br />' . $user->lang('TOO_MANY_CHARS_LIMIT', (int) $config['max_' . $mode . '_chars']);
			return (!$update_this_message) ? $return_message : $this->warn_msg;
		}
That setting is configured under Post Settings in the ACP which, as per advocatus, is set to 60K by default.
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Chuckster555sf
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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by Chuckster555sf »

What's the highest character limit that the moderator can set? Can they exclusively post something over, 100,000,000,000,000 character limits, let's say? Or does phpbb not allow that?
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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by Marshalrusty »

Marshalrusty wrote:EDIT: Looks like we use 'mediumtext', which is quite a bit larger at 16 Megabytes.
So for single byte characters, that is a maximum of 16,000,000 without changing the schema.

An average book (250 words per page with 300 pages) has roughly 500,000 characters. 100,000,000,000,000 / 500,000 = 200,000,000, or the Library of Congress 10 times over.

What do you have that's 100,000,000,000,000 characters long?

EDIT: Not to mention that's 100 terabytes worth of text.
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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by callumacrae »

Marshalrusty wrote:
Marshalrusty wrote:EDIT: Looks like we use 'mediumtext', which is quite a bit larger at 16 Megabytes.
So for single byte characters, that is a maximum of 16,000,000 without changing the schema.

An average book (250 words per page with 300 pages) has roughly 500,000 characters. 100,000,000,000,000 / 500,000 = 200,000,000, or the Library of Congress 10 times over.

What do you have that's 100,000,000,000,000 characters long?
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Chuckster555sf
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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by Chuckster555sf »

Marshalrusty wrote:
Marshalrusty wrote:EDIT: Looks like we use 'mediumtext', which is quite a bit larger at 16 Megabytes.
So for single byte characters, that is a maximum of 16,000,000 without changing the schema.

An average book (250 words per page with 300 pages) has roughly 500,000 characters. 100,000,000,000,000 / 500,000 = 200,000,000, or the Library of Congress 10 times over.

What do you have that's 100,000,000,000,000 characters long?

EDIT: Not to mention that's 100 terabytes worth of text.
It was hyperbole.

My post is more like 100,000,000. What's the maximum after changing the schema?
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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by Marshalrusty »

Chuckster555sf wrote:My post is more like 100,000,000. What's the maximum after changing the schema?
That depends on what you change it to, which depends on which rdbms you're using and how it's configured. Also on the available storage space.

I believe that the max for longtext is 4 Gigabytes.
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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by arod-1 »

Marshalrusty wrote:
Chuckster555sf wrote:My post is more like 100,000,000. What's the maximum after changing the schema?
That depends on what you change it to, which depends on which rdbms you're using and how it's configured. Also on the available storage space.

I believe that the max for longtext is 4 Gigabytes.
actually, there are other things at play here:
by default, apache/php sets a 2MB limit for POST (this is http POST - not to be confused with forum posting).
the way phpbb works, the whole message needs to be sent with a single POST operation, so without tweaking, you won't be able to create 100MB posts.
this can be tweaked, but it depend on your service provider, and may require some deep understanding for php configuration and setup (if i remember correctly, there are at leat 2 different php.ini variables that need to be changed to allow > 2MB POST).

in addition, for super-long posts, you may need to tweak other variable/values, such as timeouts: by default, php will timeout after 30 seconds, and trying to upload huge messages, you might hit those limits. it's not just network trafic times (although this comes into play also: many users do not have enough bandwidth to upload 100MB in less than 30 seconds) - phpbb does some funky things when posting a message (that's phpbb post, not http POST) like scanning for "bad words", updating search tables, and more stuff.

i will be surprised to see a real world phpbb installation that can handle 16MB posts, which theoretically does not even require schema change, let alone 100+MB posts.

(btw: 16MB for mediumtext is the mysql limit.
other backend DBs may impose different limits - either larger or smaller. i vagualy remember something about 8K limit when using MSSQL for storage engine, though this might have been augmented - this was really really long time ago - prolly from 2.0.x days).


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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by Pony99CA »

Chuckster555sf wrote:
Marshalrusty wrote:
Marshalrusty wrote:EDIT: Looks like we use 'mediumtext', which is quite a bit larger at 16 Megabytes.
So for single byte characters, that is a maximum of 16,000,000 without changing the schema.

An average book (250 words per page with 300 pages) has roughly 500,000 characters. 100,000,000,000,000 / 500,000 = 200,000,000, or the Library of Congress 10 times over.
My post is more like 100,000,000. What's the maximum after changing the schema?
So that's still about 200 books if Rusty's numbers are correct. I'm curious what you would post that is that long and if you actually expect users to read it (as opposed to it being some reference material where users would search for pieces instead of reading the whole thing).

One thing to do if you don't want to change the schema is to break the text down into chunks (chapters or even pages) where each chunk gets its own post. That will also make linking to parts of the text much easier.

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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by Chuckster555sf »

Pony99CA wrote:
Chuckster555sf wrote:
Marshalrusty wrote:
Marshalrusty wrote:EDIT: Looks like we use 'mediumtext', which is quite a bit larger at 16 Megabytes.
So for single byte characters, that is a maximum of 16,000,000 without changing the schema.

An average book (250 words per page with 300 pages) has roughly 500,000 characters. 100,000,000,000,000 / 500,000 = 200,000,000, or the Library of Congress 10 times over.
My post is more like 100,000,000. What's the maximum after changing the schema?
So that's still about 200 books if Rusty's numbers are correct. I'm curious what you would post that is that long and if you actually expect users to read it (as opposed to it being some reference material where users would search for pieces instead of reading the whole thing).

One thing to do if you don't want to change the schema is to break the text down into chunks (chapters or even pages) where each chunk gets its own post. That will also make linking to parts of the text much easier.

Steve
Steve, do you know if I can anchor or have parts of each said chapter jump from chapter to chapter from within the posts, as long as it is still on the same page of the thread? So that way it doesn't have to reload. I'm thinking of doing a table of contents on the first post and then four total chapters with the pages basically being the years (I'm doing a calender from mid 70s to today). And trust me, lots of people will want to see it because it's dedicated to a certain band.
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Re: Is there a word limit to how much you can post?

Post by Pony99CA »

Chuckster555sf wrote:Steve, do you know if I can anchor or have parts of each said chapter jump from chapter to chapter from within the posts, as long as it is still on the same page of the thread? So that way it doesn't have to reload. I'm thinking of doing a table of contents on the first post and then four total chapters with the pages basically being the years (I'm doing a calender from mid 70s to today). And trust me, lots of people will want to see it because it's dedicated to a certain band.
If you're sure that the posts will be on the same page, you can use the Goto/Anchor BBCodes. If you're just linking to the start of the post, each post already has an anchor, so you would only need the Goto BBCode (you can find the anchor/post-id by clicking the little icon to the left of the post's author's name).

Remember that people can set their own pagination though. If you're only going to have four posts, you'll probably be safe -- I doubt that too many people want to see fewer than 5 posts per page.

Steve

P.S. I'm guessing the Grateful Dead....
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