I want to implement a character limit to a data value on my PostgreSQL database for my Ruby on Rails application. Currently my database table looks like this:
create_table "applications", force: :cascade do |t|
t.string "name"
t.string "gender"
t.date "date_of_birth"
t.string "gpa"
t.text "essay"
t.datetime "created_at", null: false
t.datetime "updated_at", null: false
end
I want to change it so the "essay" only allows 10000 characters. From my limited understanding of PostgreSQL, text is unlimited by default whereas string is for 255 characters or less. I thought about implementing a Javascript conditional to not let the user hit the submission button in the client if the text is over 1,000 characters, but of course a tech savvy user could change that. What would be the most optimal way to do this?
Use rails model validations - validates_length_of.
On the rails end you can add this in application.rb file
validates_length_of :essay, :maximum => 1000
This will ensure that max size is not exceded. Also keep the javascript validation, since its helpful for all users except the malicious once.
Also I recommend you to change the table name from applications. You can get easily confused