4 ms·

Why the {1,255} ? Pg's text type is not varchar, it can get a lot longer than that and still index just fine, and while I can see a restriction on the pre_relea

by mst 4y ago

Why the {1,255} ? Pg's text type is not varchar, it can get a lot longer than that and still index just fine, and while I can see a restriction on the pre_release stuff -maybe- being useful, compilation/build metadata doesn't seem like something where an enforced maximum length that low is necessarily preferable. (I could see URLs, file paths, repo+path+sha etc. type stuff being useful in metadata and not something the code recording it can really control the length of - it may not do any harm in practice at least for a while, but I don't immediately see what -good- the restriction does, albeit I'm perfectly willing to be told "here's the good thing about it that you didn't think of" ;)

oliverrice 4y ago
The 255 max length is something you could consider if untrusted people are able to insert data (through an API for example). A column in postgres can store up to 1 GB of data so its a possible DOS vector. Probably not an issue for most use-cases, just something that was considered in the application those code samples came from
- mst 4y ago
  I would still have gone with a higher length for the meta stuff, given the 2730 character limit on indexing I'd've thought 2048 would probably be fine and much less likely to result in a long path unexpectedly ventilating somebody's foot. If space abuse is a vector under consideration, given there doesn't seem to be a restriction on the number of entries (if I somehow missed one my apologies) you could easily stuff it with a really big array of 255 character entries so I wonder if 2048 plus some sort of reasonably generous limit on the number of elements might not achieve the goal better and provide a better UX/DX as an added bonus. (I'm currently working on a design in a somewhat related area so I've been doing a fair bit of thinking about this - I may of course still be completely wrong, but if so I can at least claim I put effort into ending up wrong ;)

by mst 4y ago

oliverrice 4y ago

The 255 max length is something you could consider if untrusted people are able to insert data (through an API for example). A column in postgres can store up to 1 GB of data so its a possible DOS vector. Probably not an issue for most use-cases, just something that was considered in the application those code samples came from

mst 4y ago
I would still have gone with a higher length for the meta stuff, given the 2730 character limit on indexing I'd've thought 2048 would probably be fine and much less likely to result in a long path unexpectedly ventilating somebody's foot. If space abuse is a vector under consideration, given there doesn't seem to be a restriction on the number of entries (if I somehow missed one my apologies) you could easily stuff it with a really big array of 255 character entries so I wonder if 2048 plus some sort of reasonably generous limit on the number of elements might not achieve the goal better and provide a better UX/DX as an added bonus. (I'm currently working on a design in a somewhat related area so I've been doing a fair bit of thinking about this - I may of course still be completely wrong, but if so I can at least claim I put effort into ending up wrong ;)