Django fixture fails, stating “DatabaseError: value too long for type character varying(50)”

Question

I have a fixture (json) which loads in development environment but fails to do so in server environment. The error says: \"DatabaseError: value too long for type chara

Answer 1

Well, what makes the difference is the encoding of the template databases. On the production server they had ascii encoding while on the dev box it is utf-8.

By default postgres creates a database using the template1. My understanding is that if its encoding is not utf-8, then the database you create will have this issue, even though you create it with utf-8 encoding.

Therefore I dropped it and recreated it with its encoding set to UTF8. The snippet below does it (taken from here):

psql -U postgres 

UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = TRUE where datname = 'template0';
\c template0
UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate = FALSE where datname = 'template1';
drop database template1;
create database template1 with template = template0 encoding = 'UNICODE';
UPDATE pg_database SET datistemplate = TRUE where datname = 'template1';
\c template1
UPDATE pg_database SET datallowconn = FALSE where datname = 'template0';

Now the fixture loads smoothly.