varchar is different than a text field in mysql: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/blob.html http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/blob.html It stores te

varchar is different than a text field in mysql: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/blob.html http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/blob.html It stores text fields as blobs. I suppose now the right way would be the json data type. It didn't exist when I was working with these servers though (or they were on a much older version of MySql) https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/json.html https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/json.html