The message exceeds the maximum allowed length

[shorel]

I have attempted to copy and paste a small image (35k) in a post and a PM.  On selecting preview, the following error message is displayed:

The message has the following error or errors that must be corrected before continuing:
The message exceeds the maximum allowed length (20000 characters).

Is there a solution to this apart from having to use a url

[vbgamer45]

Find the setting in
Admin -> Forum - >Posts and Topics -> Post Settings
"Maximum allowed post size"

[Arantor]

You're not really supposed to push images directly into the body of a post - that's what attachments are for.

[Kindred]

Yeah, what arantor said... you can't paste an image into a message

[Arantor]

Well, you *can*, because that's exactly what SCEditor seems to have done (and embedding images inline is completely technically possible using data URLs, whether SMF should do something about that is a completely separate question)

[Sesquipedalian]

embedding images inline is completely technically possible using data URLs, whether SMF should do something about that is a completely separate question

Data URLs are detected and removed—or more accurately, replaced with the about:invalid URI.

[Arantor]

The OP's situation would suggest otherwise...

[Sesquipedalian]

The OP's situation occurs at a point before that part of the code can be executed. If the post hadn't already exceeded the maximum message size and generated an error for that reason, the data URI would have been stripped out.

There's a good argument to be made that we should also tweak SCEditor's settings so that attempts to paste an image into the body text will be rejected before the user ever submits anything to the server. But that's a separate matter from the one I was addressing—namely, the notion that it is currently possible to embed images into SMF posts using data URIs.

[Arantor]

Interesting, because that's not what I'd do - I'd convert it to an attachment and use the attach bbcode if it otherwise passes the attachment rules. (And I've implemented this in more than one CMS that uses a different fully HTML editor)

There's not really a compelling reason to make life more difficult on the user for an operation that, in all honesty, they probably don't even realise is happening.

[Sesquipedalian]

That's a good idea. It would need to be done via JavaScript in the editor, though, in order to get it to play nicely with the attachments system.

[Arantor]

Nothing stopping you handling it on the server side - you don't have to push it in as a multipart POST, you can extract it on the other side and create attachments out of it.

[Sesquipedalian]

We would want it to appear as an attachment in the UI when added. This would matter not only for UX reasons, but also because we wouldn't want it to become a way to bypass the attachment restrictions.

[shorel]

Many thanks for addressing the issue, and for your time.