Introduction
When users submit data through Gravity Forms, the characters they enter must be compatible with the database. If a form contains characters the database cannot handle, the form may fail to save properly, leading to incomplete or missing data. This guide explains handling situations where form submissions fail due to invalid characters.
How Gravity Forms Handles Character Validation
Note: When a user enters characters the database doesn’t support, such as special characters or emoji, the submission may fail validation or, in some case, may fail to save the data – leading to incomplete submissions. This often occurs in text fields where non-ASCII characters like ē, ç, or ä are used.
Since Gravity Forms version 2.7.13.1, character validation has been implemented for each of the following field types – text, textarea, name, address, post title, and post content. This was introduced to address issues where form submissions containing unsupported characters could lead to incomplete or failed submissions. When character validation fails for these field types, the user will be presented with a validation message. If invalid characters are submitted to other field types, entry data may not save properly. If this happens, checking the database directly may help you recover the missing data.
Updating the Database Character Set and Collation
To avoid character-related issues, it’s important to make sure the database is set to support a wider range of characters to include all those you may expect to receive on the form. Here’s how to fix the problem:
- Change Database Character Set and Collation.
Update your database to use utf8mb4 character set and utf8mb4_unicode_ci collation. These are defaults recommended by WordPress. This allows the database to handle various characters, including emojis and accented letters. Work with your web host to convert existing database tables. - Update wp-config.php.
Ensure that your WordPress wp-config.php file has the following settings:
define('DB_CHARSET', 'utf8mb4');
define('DB_COLLATE', '');