Several times over the past year I have run into the same problem when using the PHPToolkit with Netsuite Web Services; Netsuite will store values that don’t match its data validation schema. For example, there are several contacts stored in our system (created by users using the web UI) that have the field “office phone” set to a value longer than 21 character (which is the maximum number of allowed characters). This means that I can load data from the Netsuite back-end which I can’t resubmit, instead I get the following error:
EXCEEDED_MAX_FIELD_LENGTH: The field *** contained more than the maximum number ( *** ) of characters allowed.
It seems rather ridiculous to me that Netsuite would set the values of fields to strings that exceed the maximum length requirements of those fields. This makes for a programming headache since I have to validate not only the data coming from users, but also the data coming from Netsuite. I have submitted a case to Netsuite about the issue, but, so far, nothing has changed.
Update: it looks like the problem is due to Netsuite reformatting fields after you submit them. For example, the phone number 1234567890EXT.2367 is reformatted into (123) 456-7890 EXT.2367 which exceeds the maximum number of characters. I have submitted the case to Netsuite and am hopeful they will fix this problem soon.