Media URI truncates long URLs found in the wild as part of my learning

[gavinbeatty]

Describe the bug
Media URI field truncates some long URLs found in the wild as part of my learning. Podcasts that have web players and CDNs often have very long URLs (e.g., 500 characters), but LWT truncates them (I'm guessing at 256 characters).

A limit like 2048 characters, or 1024 characters seems more appropriate, if limits must be in place.

To Reproduce
Steps to reproduce the behavior:

1. Go to this podcast episode page
2. Click on View Source in your browser
3. Search for "m4a:" in the source
4. Copy the long URL into Media URI on an Edit Text page in LWT
5. The URL is truncated even before all the ?foo=bar&baz=bop URL options

Expected behavior
Expected long URLs such as in this example to work perfectly fine. In this case, the URL is about 500 characters.
Screenshots
N/A

Server (please complete)

• OS Debian GNU/Linux 12 (bookworm)
• LWT version v002008001
• Database name lwt_db
• Database prefix (surrounded by "") ""
• Database Location nginx/1.22.1
• Database Size 0.1 MB
• Web Server REDACTED
• Server Software Apache/?
• PHP Version 8.2.7
• MySQL Version 10.11.3-MariaDB-1

Desktop:

• OS: Windows 10 Pro
• Browser: Firefox
• Version: 117.0.1

Additional context
N/A

[HugoFara]

Hello, thanks for your detailed issue report! I checked the source code and here is the breakdown:

1. On text creation/edition, the field near "Media URI" (TxAudioURI) has a limit of 200 characters, so it trims an character above.
2. In the database, the field is saved under TxAudioURI varchar(200) in the table texts. It means that it cannot save more than 200 characters.

More than an UX bug it is a database feature. As URLs can be quite long, I should raise the limit, at least to 2000 characters (source : https://stackoverflow.com/questions/417142/what-is-the-maximum-length-of-a-url-in-different-browsers). I bundle this feature with the next database update!

As a side note, you can already save audio files locally and rename them, so you won't reach the limit, that may be enough before a more convenient solution!

[gavinbeatty]

That's a shame the db schema has the limit as well. I know it can be more awkward to change schemas.

A 2000 byte limit would work for me.

I've already done as you suggested and saved long URL audio locally for now, but it's running on a VPS with a tiny disk, so it would be nice to just use a URI.

Thanks for your work.

[HugoFara]

Sorry for the limitation 😓 I may try to bring the limitation change to LWT 2.9.0, but the way the database schemas is handled now does is dirty, so I may want to change that before. Right now I am thinking of two other solutions:

• Did you try to use an URL minifier service? Depending on your browser security policy, you may be able to able the 200 characters limit.
• Use a custom database. You will basically need to change lines

  lwt/inc/database_connect.php

  Line 1958 in d8e2258

  TxAudioURI varchar(200) DEFAULT NULL,

  and the content of

  lwt/inc/database_connect.php

  Line 1474 in d8e2258

  function update_database($dbname)

  . I don't want to give to much details here because it is a very risky operation that will lead to bugs or database corruption if you don't know what you are editing...

I wish you a nice spanish learning!

[gavinbeatty]

Good idea. I already put LWT behind nginx, and I don't mind editing its config, so next time I'll try a redirect like:

location = /podcast/episode/id {
  return 301 https://example.com/podcast/episode/audio/with/really/long/url;
}

I'm unable to access my instance rn, but IIRC the text body limit is explicitly stated, so even before any eventual db change, it might be a good idea to at least explicitly state the Media URI limit on the Add/Edit Text page.

Thanks.

[HugoFara]

Now you can specify long URL, the change was implemented in 0bc776f, released with LWT 2.10.0!