gastownhall/beads · error

database name too long

Error message

database name too long

What it means

ValidateDatabaseName rejects any database name longer than 64 characters. Dolt, like MySQL, limits identifiers to 64 bytes, and the name is interpolated into CREATE DATABASE statements, so an over-long name would fail server-side anyway. The check runs before any query is issued, so callers get a deterministic client-side error instead of a driver error.

Source

Thrown at internal/storage/dolt/history.go:34

var validTablePattern = regexp.MustCompile(`^[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_]*$`)

// validDatabasePattern matches valid MySQL database names (alphanumeric, underscore, hyphen)
var validDatabasePattern = regexp.MustCompile(`^[a-zA-Z_][a-zA-Z0-9_\-]*$`)

// validateRef checks if a ref is safe to use in queries.
// Delegates to issueops.ValidateRef.
func validateRef(ref string) error {
	return issueops.ValidateRef(ref)
}

// ValidateDatabaseName checks if a database name is safe to use in queries.
// Prevents SQL injection via backtick escaping in CREATE DATABASE statements.
func ValidateDatabaseName(name string) error {
	if name == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("database name cannot be empty")
	}
	if len(name) > 64 {
		return fmt.Errorf("database name too long")
	}
	if !validDatabasePattern.MatchString(name) {
		return fmt.Errorf("invalid database name: %s", name)
	}
	return nil
}

// validateTableName checks if a table name is safe to use in queries
func validateTableName(table string) error {
	if table == "" {
		return fmt.Errorf("table name cannot be empty")
	}
	if len(table) > 64 {
		return fmt.Errorf("table name too long")
	}
	if !validTablePattern.MatchString(table) {
		return fmt.Errorf("invalid table name: %s", table)
	}

View on GitHub (pinned to 71377f2769)

Solutions

1. Shorten the database name to 64 characters or fewer (len(name) <= 64) before passing it to any dolt store bootstrap/connect function.
2. If the name is derived from a repo URL, truncate or hash the long portion (e.g. take a sha256 prefix) and keep it within the 64-byte identifier limit.
3. Verify the value being passed is the short database name, not the full remote URL or path.

Example fix

// before
remoteURL := "https://doltremoteapi.dolthub.com/my-very-long-organization-name/my-extremely-long-repository-name"
store, err := dolt.BootstrapFromRemoteWithDB(ctx, remoteURL, "workdb")
// after
dbName := "my-org-my-repo" // <= 64 chars, matches validDatabasePattern
store, err := dolt.BootstrapFromRemoteWithDB(ctx, "https://doltremoteapi.dolthub.com/my-org/my-repo", dbName)

func validDBName(name string) bool { return len(name) > 0 && len(name) <= 64 }
if !validDBName(dbName) { return fmt.Errorf("db name %q must be 1-64 chars", dbName) }

func isShortIdentifier(s string) bool { return len(s) <= 64 }

When it happens

Trigger: Calling BootstrapFromRemoteWithDB, openServerConnection, or the anonymous caller (connection setup) with a remote URL/org-repo slug or database argument whose length exceeds 64 characters.

Common situations: Deriving a database name from a long GitHub repo URL or org/repo path; embedding timestamps or UUID suffixes into already-long names; configuring a remote like 'https://doltremoteapi.dolthub.com/very-long-org/very-long-repository-name' producing a name over the limit.

Related errors

• invalid database name: %s
• table name too long
• unsafe dolt status table name %q
• ErrTransaction
• ErrQuery

AI-assisted analysis of gastownhall/beads@71377f2769 (2026-08-30). Data as JSON: /api/errors/7c46c3d6294269ba. Report an issue: GitHub.