Bigger signature

Worker Joined: Dec 21, 2004 Posts: 116

I have 7.4 patched nuke and I wanna let user have a signature with more than 255 chars.
I incremented the value to 500... but in db user_sig is a varchar(255) and 255 is the max value that a varchar can be.
Can I change tha type of variable without make big security hole or great incompatibility problems ?

Site Admin Joined: Jun 04, 2004 Posts: 6433

Since there are many other text fields in various Nuke tables and even tinytext fields in the users table, I don't see any reason why changing the signature would significantly impact security. PHP handles type conversions easily, so there also shouldn't be incompatibility problems. Hack away...but backup and test first if it's an important site.

Posted: Sat Dec 25, 2004 4:03 am

Quote:

PHP handles type conversions easily, so there also shouldn't be incompatibility problems

In chatserv patched version usually there are some controls on the variable get from db, is is some type of control on the size/type of signature to change ?

Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 11:14 am

Someone can tell me if it's better convert the varchar(255) to a "blob" or to a "text" variable type ?

What's the big difference between them ?
Can I simply modify the type in db or before have to do some strange operation ? :S

Site Admin/Owner Joined: Aug 27, 2002 Posts: 17088

I would stick witht a text type. Blobs are more overhead.

Posted: Tue Jan 04, 2005 6:57 pm

I remember trying this in either PHPNuke or the standard alone verson of PHPBB and having it cut off anyway at the 255th letter. There's probably something in the code that cuts it off at 255 before saving it to the database. You may want to scan the profile code to double check.

I do have a couple of the types changed but I'm passing around 500K sized articles too. Smile

-drmike

(And kicking them out via autonews. Lots of fun)