Author Topic: How are multiple-choice options stored in MySQL? (Read 806 times)

cscooper · November 26, 2011, 09:02:41 am

The default "Constituent Info - Individuals" custom data set contains a multiple-choice field for "Constituent type". Because of the way I imported my contact information, most contacts have no constituent type specified (= no row in the civicrm_value_constituent_info table). I was going to execute some simple SQL commands to make every contact have the "Volunteer" type if they didn't already have a constituent type, but then I noticed that the constituent_type field in the civicrm_value_constituent_info table has an interesting format - as far as I can tell, the field starts with a hex 0x01 character and ends with a hex 0x01 character, and has any number of types in-between also separated by hex 0x01 characters. Am I reading this correctly?

Is the usage of 0x01 characters something MySQL does, or Drupal, or PHP, or is this something specific to CiviCRM?

For inserting values into this table, can I use any MySQL client (I'm using HeidiSQL on Windows to access my MySQL database remotely)? Or is there more cleverness going on behind the scenes?

Thanks,
Chris

Hershel · November 26, 2011, 11:56:30 am

This is a funny character. There are a few I think. They are specific to CiviCRM. One is defined as CRM_Core_DAO::VALUE_SEPARATOR in the code. You should be able to use Heidi, but I can't guarantee how it connects, using what collation etc. But try one and see what happens. It should work.

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Author Topic: How are multiple-choice options stored in MySQL? (Read 806 times)

cscooper

How are multiple-choice options stored in MySQL?

Hershel

Re: How are multiple-choice options stored in MySQL?