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phpMyAdmin Tutorials

MySQL Field Types

MySQL supports a number of column types, which may be grouped into three categories: numeric types, date and time types, and string (character) types. This section first gives an overview of the types available. Please refer to the MySQL manuals for more details.

While phpMyAdmin provides a dropdown menu to select the information below, this is useful for writing SQL code.

Text Types

CHAR ( ) NOTE
A fixed section from 0 to 255 characters long.

VARCHAR ( ) NOTE
A variable section from 0 to 255 characters long.

TINYBLOB, TINYTEXT NOTE
A string with a maximum length of 255 characters.

BLOB, TEXT
A string with a maximum length of 65535 characters.

MEDIUMBLOB, MEDIUMTEXT
A string with a maximum length of 16777215 characters.

LONGBLOB, LONGTEXT
A string with a maximum length of 4294967295 characters.

Number Types

TINYINT ( ) NOTE
-128 to 127 normal
0 - 255 UNSIGNED.

SMALLINT ( ) NOTE
-32768 to 32767 normal
0 to 65535 UNSIGNED.

MEDIUMINT ( ) NOTE
The signed range is -8388608 to 8388607 normal
0 to 16777215 UNSIGNED.

INT ( ) NOTE
-2147483648 to 2147483647 normal
0 to 4294967295 UNSIGNED.

BIGINT ( ) NOTE
-9223372036854775808 to 9223372036854775807 normal
0 to 18446744073709551615 UNSIGNED.

FLOAT
A small number with a floating decimal point.

DOUBLE ( , ) NOTE
A large number with a floating decimal point.

DECIMAL ( , ) NOTE
A DOUBLE stored as a string, allowing for a fixed decimal point.

Date Types

DATE
YYYY-MM-DD

DATETIME
YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS

TIMESTAMP
YYYYMMDDHHMMSS

TIME
HH:MM:SS

YEAR
4-digit year (YYYY)

Miscellaneous Types

ENUM ( ) NOTE
Short for ENUMERATION which means that each column may have one of a specified possible values.

SET
Similar to ENUM except each column may have more than one of the specified possible values.

Note: The ( ) brackets allow you to enter a maximum number of characters will be used in the column ex. VARCHAR(20). For double and decimal, there are two items allowed: length followed by the number of digits after the decimal point (significant digits) ex. double (10,3) would allow 10 digits and keep 3 numbers after the decimal point.