Problem/Motivation
In the context of my project, I have a specific usage of your module, because I'm only using the NotificationsWidgetService service to send notifications in certain circumstances not covered by the basic configuration. And it's a very good thing to have this possibility.
However, sometimes the message is too long and I get the following sql error:
Drupal\Core\Entity\EntityStorageException: SQLSTATE[22001]: String data, right truncated: 1406 Data too long for column 'message' at row 1: ...
because 63 characters are stored automatically for the link => <a class=‘noti-store-msg’ href=‘javascript:;’ data-link="></a> which leaves only 192 characters available, which isn't necessarily enough when:
- the url of the entity can be long, depending on the alias pattern used,
- the message content is long, if it is partially customised.
Steps to reproduce
It's easy to reproduce this bug by forcing, in a Controller, a notification to be sent, as long as you have an entity with a title and a long URL.
$content = sprintf(
'The page %s has been updated by %s',
$entity->getTitle(),
$user->getAccountName()
);
$message = [
'id' => $entity->id(),
'bundle' => $entity->bundle(),
'content' => $content,
'content_link' => $entity->toUrl()->toString(),
];
// Here we force a notification to be sent to the superadmin user 1
\Drupal::service('notifications_widget.logger')
->logNotification($message, 'update', $entity, 1, $user);
Proposed resolution
There are two possible approaches to solving this problem:
1/ The first - the simplest :
Change the schema of the notifications table to store data of type text and not a varchar(255).
2/ The second - more complex and longer to implement:
Do not store this message in this way, but store the useful information in separate columns and:
- Use the necessary information in the
NotificationsWidgetBlock block:
i.e.
$notificationList[] = [
'id' => $notification->id,
'nas_id' => $nasId,
'message' => $notification->message,
'entity_url' => $notification->url,
'status' => $status,
];
- Pass only useful information to the templates that send the notifications
i.e.
{% for notifications in notification_list %}
<li data-id="{{ notifications.id }}" data-nas-id = "{{ notifications.nas_id }}" data-read-status = "{{ notifications.status ? 'read' : 'unread' }}" class="notification-items {{ notifications.status ? 'read' : 'unread' }}">
<i class="fa fa-dot-circle-o" aria-hidden="true"></i>
<span class="notification-msg">
<a class="noti-store-msg" href="javascript:;" data-link="{{ notifications.url }}">
{{ notifications.message }}
</a>
</span>
<span class="glyphicon glyphicon-trash notification-remove"></span>
</li>
{% endfor %}
This second approach would also make it easier to integrate messages.
Data model changes
One way or another, the data model needs to be reviewed.
