CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

I am getting errors when I create new groups with similar names when importing contacts. For example, here is a list of the groups I want to create:

Residential Gas Water Heating> Water Heater Retailers
Residential Gas Water Heating> Water Heater Trade Assoc
Residential Gas Water Heating> Water Heater Mfr
Residential Gas Water Heating> Water Heater Distributors

The first one goes ok, but then I get database errors like this:

    [to_string] => [db_error: message="DB Error: already exists" code=-5 mode=callback callback=CRM_Core_Error::handle prefix="" info="INSERT INTO civicrm_group (name , title , description , is_active , group_type ) VALUES ('Residential_Gas_Water_Heating_g' , 'Residential Gas Water Heating> Water Heater Mfr' , 'from ACT' ,  1 ,  NULL )  [nativecode=1062 ** Duplicate entry 'Residential_Gas_Water_Heating_g' for key 3]"]

That looks like a database design issue: the key length is too short. I am on version CiviCRM v3.4.6 - perhaps this has just been fixed in 4.x?

My naming convention above--which results in long group names--is to get around Civi's lack of support for a display hierarchy in groups. Maybe that is enhanced also and it is time to upgrade? Until then what can I do? (I do not want, at this point, to rename the groups to be shorter because this whole approach is already in place for hundreds of groups--some of which are OG-synced from Drupal)

Just checked the code base and seems like this is still an issue with 4.x

Would be good if you can investigate and submit a patch that fixes this for 4.3. I suspect its a fairly easy patch (if name is too long, then md5 a section of the name and truncate name to a smaller length)

Ping us on IRC if you need help getting started

lobo