Multi-Select Product Attribute Backend Change

[BrianPittVP]

Somewhere in the 1.9.3.x release, Magento changed how it stores Multi-Select product attributes. They used to be stored in the catalog_product_entity_varchar table, but they moved it to catalog_product_entity_text, I assume to allow for more space.

We recently underwent an upgrade from Magento 1.9.2.4 to OpenMage v20.x, and one of the things we noticed is that some attributes' values have moved to the catalog_product_entity_text table. Everything is working fine within OpenMage, we caught this because we had external scripts hard-coded to grab values that suddenly disappeared.

I'm trying to understand when and how this happens. I don't see anything in the code that migrates data from one to the other, or anything that looks in one table if it doesn't find a value in the other. Admittedly, I haven't gone through every single line of code, but I've searched for everything I can think of, and nothing jumps out.

Does anyone understand this enough to explain it, or at least point me in the right direction?

[kiatng]

Using VS Code, I found line 42 in seconds:

The commit is here:
d48bebc

In your browser, search for multiselect, I think you will find your answers.

[BrianPittVP]

Thanks. I didn't know what to look for, I appreciate the 42 seconds of your time.