change products_options_values_name to text type from varchar

[rlparker25]

Hi,

I am displaying my attribute as a list with radio buttons but I would like to be able to add longer descriptions of each attribute.

I tried changing the field type in the database but I get this error

SQL query:

ALTER TABLE `products_options_values` CHANGE `products_options_values_name` `products_options_values_name` TEXT CHARACTER SET latin1 COLLATE latin1_general_ci NOT NULL

MySQL said:

#1170 - BLOB/TEXT column 'products_options_values_name' used in key specification without a key length

Does anyone know how I could change this?

Thank you

Rachael

[DrByte]

TEXT is a VERY LONG data type. Why are you choosing TEXT? Are you planning to write a book for each radio button? That sounds like it would be confusing navigation for the customer. Plus, TEXT takes up a lot more database space even for blank entries than a varchar field does.


If you're going to use TEXT as a field type, then any indexes set for that field need to be adjusted to state how many letters it should use from that field when building the indexes. Making that number too long (ie: more than 10 or so) will make your database indexes become HUGE and will slow down performance. The error message you got is a direct result of trying to change a field, which already has an index set on it, to a type which requires also changing and rebuilding the index.