Hi,
I working on a Firebird database that has a default Charset = UTF8. I'm
using the SqlDB package via tiOPF to save and read my data from the
database.
I have a table with a field defined as Char(2) and I have set it with a
value "en" which represents a Country Code.
When I read back that value, by TCountry unit tests fail with the
following message.
==========================
1) textrunner.SQL Database tests.TTestCountry.TestCountry_ReadList:
ETestFailure
at $0807F9B4
"Check #1: Failed on ID
Expected:
"en"
But was:
"en "
==========================
Further investigation revealed that when I read back a Char(2) field via
TField.AsString the resulting string is 8 bytes wide. I can see where
this value comes from - Firebird obviously uses 4 bytes per UTF-8
character, because that is the largest amount of bytes a UTF-8 character
can use. Not very efficient, but that is what Firebird 2.1 does when the
Charset = UTF8.
Now I was wondering how to resolve this.
1) Switch all my Char() fields to VarChar() which resolves the problem.
2) Trim(lField.AsString) before I store it in each TCountry.Code property.
3) SqlDB does the TField.AsString trimming for any Char() fields.
Is option #3 viable? This will resolve any similar issue to all future
developers using Firebird with Char() type fields and Charset=UTF8.
Or should I opt for options #1 or #2 instead. Option #1 is probably the
least amount of effort because the project I am working on is new, so
there is no existing database that need to be converted. Problem being
that another developer down the line might add a new field of type
Char() and then we sit with the same problem again.
What is your thoughts on this. As far as I know MSEgui does automatic
trimming of spaces in the TField, so should this maybe be done in SqlDB
(Interbase/Firebird) as well?
Regards,
- Graeme -
--
fpGUI Toolkit - a cross-platform GUI toolkit using Free Pascal
http://opensoft.homeip.net/fpgui/
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