Knowledgebase

MySQL Variable Types

MySQL database has three (3) main data types: text, numbers and dates/times.

Text Types

CHAR( ) A fixed section from 0 to 255 characters long.
VARCHAR( ) A variable section from 0 to 255 characters long.
TINYTEXT A string with a maximum length of 255 characters.
TEXT A string with a maximum length of 65535 characters.
BLOB A string with a maximum length of 65535 characters.
MEDIUMTEXT A string with a maximum length of 16777215 characters.
MEDIUMBLOB A string with a maximum length of 16777215 characters.
LONGTEXT A string with a maximum length of 4294967295 characters.
LONGBLOB A string with a maximum length of 4294967295 characters.

The ( ) brackets allow you to specify the maximum  number of characters that can be used in the column.

BLOB stands for Binary Large OBject, and can be used to store non-text information that is encoded into text.


Number Types

TINYINT ( ) -128 to 127 normal 0 to 255 UNSIGNED
SMALLINT( ) -32768 to 32767 normal 0 to 65535 UNSIGNED
MEDIUMINT( ) -8388608 to 8388607 normal 0 to 16777215 UNSIGNED
INT( ) -2147483648 to 2147483647 normal 0 to 4294967295 UNSIGNED
BIGINT( ) -9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807 normal 0 to 18446744073709551615 UNSIGNED
FLOAT A small number with a floating decimal point.
DOUBLE( , ) A large number with a floating decimal point.
DECIMAL( , ) A DOUBLE stored as a string, allowing for a fixed decimal point.

 


Date/Time Types

DATE YYYY-MM-DD
DATETIME YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
TIMESTAMP YYYYMMDDHHMMSS
TIME HH:MM:SS
YEAR YYYY

Date/Time fields will only accept a valid date or time.

  • 0 Users Found This Useful
Was this answer helpful?