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Question

Notion error: “body failed validation. Fix one: body.children.length should be ≤ 100, instead was '110'

OliveiraHero
Badge +1

Hi there,

Does anyone also encounter a similar error with creating a database item in Notion?

 

In my case, the zap was working fine before. However, in the past few days, it failed to create new items, due to this error: “body failed validation. Fix one: body.children.length should be ≤ 100, instead was '110'

When I reduce the content in the content field, it seems to work. I don't think there was a limit on the main content field of an item in Notion before, while there was a limit of content length in other fields.

 

 

Is it a recent change?

 

Thanks for the help!

16 replies

chanelle
Userlevel 7
Badge +8

@OliveiraHero Hmm, I’d like to take a closer look at your overall set up before diagnosing. Can you please provide some screenshots, similar to this, of your Zap set up? This helps us get a better idea of the “full picture”, and at times can lead to easier diagnoses. 

Vadiraja

I am facing the same problem. I’d love to know the solution to this. I’ve attached a screenshot of my setup.

1 Attachment
ken.a
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Hi @Vadiraja,

Looking at the screenshot, it seems like the issue here is in the “Content Format” field. Could you please try changing that to “Plain Text”?

68efb30867d6588e5fb5d03ea1e5fb0d.png
(view larger)

Please keep us posted! 😊

Vadiraja

Hi @Vadiraja,

Looking at the screenshot, it seems like the issue here is in the “Content Format” field. Could you please try changing that to “Plain Text”?

68efb30867d6588e5fb5d03ea1e5fb0d.png
(view larger)

Please keep us posted! 😊

Thank you so much for the reply @ken.a!

However, I dropped this Zap because I found a better way to optimize my workflow. 

ken.a
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Hi @Vadiraja,

Gotcha, thanks for letting us know! 😊

@OliveiraHero, have you resolved this issue? If not, please let us know. We’re happy to troubleshoot further! 😊

OliveiraHero
Badge +1

Hi @ken.a 

I encountered a similar error again: 

body failed validation: body.children.length should be ≤ `100`, instead was `105`.

 

Not exactly sure what “100” or “105” means - since probably they don’t mean number of characters.

 

Do you know what this types of error mean? Is there a length limit for the “markdown” too?

ken.a
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Hi @OliveiraHero,

I’m not really an expert when is comes to markdown, but have you tried changing the “Content Format” field to “Plain text”? My hunch here is that the “Content” field of the Notion step only allows a maximum of 100 characters when set to Markdown.

Please keep us posted! 😊

OliveiraHero
Badge +1

Thank for your help, Ken!

 

Plain text also has a limit of 2000 character so it wouldn’t work for my use case.

 

Just frustrated with the unclear error message returned from the Notion flow in this case : )

ken.a
Userlevel 7
Badge +6

Hi @OliveiraHero,

Thanks for the update.

I did some additional digging into the error of "body failed validation..." for "Create Database Item". This is often caused by invalid markdown was passed to the "Content" field. This can often be fixed by selecting "Plain Text" for the "Content Format" field. Because of backwards compatibility, we parse the "Content" field as markdown by default.

Regarding the 2,000 character limit. We do have an open feature request to remove the character limit when creating a database item. Please let me know if you’d like to get added to that.

Thanks!

A

@ken.a yes, can you please let me know. I’d like to overpass that limitation. 

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hi @Antoine L.! 👋

Happy to confirm that I’ve added your vote to the feature request Ken mentioned. @OliveiraHero - I’ve also added your vote for it too, as increasing that limit for the Create Database Item action would resolve those errors you’re seeing.
 
Can’t make any promises as to when or if the character limit would removed by but we’ll definitely send you both an email once it is. I don’t know of any workarounds at present but if we come across any in the meantime we’ll be sure to share details of them here. 🙂

C

@SamB  I’d love to upvote this one too! In the meantime… would it be possible to send information to the content area in successive batches?

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Thanks for letting us know @calalouf! I’ve added your vote as well. 🙂

Great idea! The Notion API has a 2,000 character limit per block so that may very well work. I say may as I’ve not tested that out myself. But if you’re able to split up the content (could try a Formatter (Text > Split Text) action perhaps?), then you could potentially use another Notion action to insert the additional content that way. 

If you do give that a try and are able it working please let us know! 

C

Hi @SamB, well I tried it! And I *almost* got it working.

I used Split Text, segment index All as Separate fields.

Then I had to create two different consecutive actions to update Notion, each with only half my content. (This was the only way to get around my character limit.)

I was about to do my happy dance, when I realized: the second action had REPLACED (rather than appended) the content added by the first.

(I thought I had read that it would append, not replace.)

Then I found this article, which seems to suggest that I’d have to create two completely separate zaps? Is that still the best I can do? 

https://community.zapier.com/troubleshooting-99/updating-notion-item-content-is-not-appending-text-but-replacing-it-with-new-one-16525

Thank you!

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Thanks for the update @calalouf. Ah, in that case I don’t think that would work as with that approach you’d be updating the block with the existing text and the additional text that was split so you’d run into the initial issue of the 2,000 character limit. 

I’ve been doing some testing and it looks like it’s possible to get around this sort of limitation by using Notion’s API request (Beta) action to append new blocks (see https://developers.notion.com/reference/patch-block-children).

You’d need to have separate actions for each section of text you want to add. I was able to successfully add the split text using the following setup: 

17e7446fe2ea23620ce0059d2fd000b9.png
In the URL field I selected the ID for the page I wanted to add a block to. And in the Body field I selected the content that I split using a formatter action. Then I duplicated that action and selected the section field that was output by the formatter action which it appended the text instead of replacing it. 🎉

One thing I should note on this is that it appears to not like any return or newline characters in the content. So those would need to be removed. Not ideal I know, but hopefully it helps as a temporary workaround for now? 🤞

SamB
Rank
Userlevel 7
Badge +11

Hey folks,

Just circling back in here to share that the feature request to remove the 2,000 character limit has been implemented!  😁🎉

In case you missed the email notification about this here’s the key information from that email:

you can now add content and values to text fields larger than 2000 characters, whether your text is markdown or plain text. We even support including more than 2000 characters in Page/Database titles.

There's nothing you need to do to take advantage of this change, it's already working in your Zaps! So go nuts with Zapping more data over into your text fields in Notion!


That said, if you’re still experiencing issues with this please do reach out in the Community or get in touch with our Support team. 

In the meantime, happy Zapping! ⚡

Reply


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