[buddypress-trac] [BuddyPress Trac] #6346: Upgrade DB tables to utf8mb4

[buddypress-trac]

#6346: Upgrade DB tables to utf8mb4
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 Reporter:  DJPaul               |       Owner:
     Type:  enhancement          |      Status:  new
 Priority:  normal               |   Milestone:  Future Release
Component:  Component - Any/All  |     Version:
 Severity:  normal               |  Resolution:
 Keywords:                       |
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Changes (by boonebgorges):

 * milestone:  Under Consideration => Future Release


Comment:

 Yes, we should do this at some point.

 >  A notable consequence of this is that it would bump our minimum
 WordPress version up to 4.2.

 I imagine there's a way to do this so that it doesn't require 4.2.

 * Shrinking the indexes does not depend on 4.2
 * We could check WP version before attempting to use WP functions for the
 table conversion. If the minimum version were not met, the migrator would
 attempt to run again on the next BP update.
 * There is some magic that should happen to ensure that invalid characters
 should be stripped before insert/update - see
 `wpdb::strip_invalid_text_for_column()` - but we can probably safely wrap
 this in an `is_callable()` wrapper, as WP itself does in one or two
 places. This would give us better error checking when 4.2 is available,
 but would leave the status quo in place on < 4.2.

 Requiring 4.2 will mean that we can't do this in BP for at least another
 couple major versions. I think it's worth exploring ways to do it sooner -
 even for 2.3, if we figure out the relevant workarounds in time.

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Ticket URL: <https://buddypress.trac.wordpress.org/ticket/6346#comment:1>
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