How to store a 300+ char string?

Question

I'm trying to store the following string in a contract

5030480389847504049639477069961901518251822532055915812015454717740961852942027334498786032153069913846973579859702642411497486328669598344496363306620763652362226170692287240855050713537819594000868803228735504934019483458523068727831434237837325563417285328158635879852481735301070609988900677951635437637299660610442447448957534545817

Its size is 337 bytes.

The relevant contract code is

contract User {
    bytes32 publicKey;

    function setPublicKey(bytes32 _publicKey)
        onlyOwner
    {
        publicKey = _publicKey;
    }

    function getPublicKey() returns (bytes32 _publicKey) {
        return publicKey;
    }

}

When I call getPublicKey() after setting it already, using (again only showing the relevant part)

contract.getPublicKey.call((err, res) => {
        if (err) {
            console.log(err);
        } else {
            const k = web3.toAscii(res);
            console.log(k);
        }
    })
}

I just get back 50304803898475040496394770699619, which is the beginning of the string/key. I figure this to be related to exceeding the bytes32 size, but what's the recommended way to get around this?

Also, I should mention I don't want to store this offchain. And also, I'm aware that gas costs to store large data in the blockchain are high but (1) I figure this would still be within an acceptable size and (2) it's a private chain for testing so I am not too concerned with that, for now.

Answer 1

My suggestion would be to use either string or bytes and just to mention there is no limit on the number of characters to store. If you are storing a lot of characters then you may consider increasing gas value. Once you increase gas value then string or bytes both should work.

If you would want to estimate Gas of a transaction then you can take a look at this web3js API -

https://github.com/ethereum/wiki/wiki/JavaScript-API#web3ethestimategas