The error happens because MySQL can index only the first N chars of a BLOB or TEXT column. So The error mainly happens when there is a field/column type of TEXT or BLOB or those belong to TEXT or BLOB types such as TINYBLOB, MEDIUMBLOB, LONGBLOB, TINYTEXT, MEDIUMTEXT, and LONGTEXT that you try to make a primary key or index. With full BLOB or TEXT without the length value, MySQL is unable to guarantee the uniqueness of the column as it’s of variable and dynamic size. So, when using BLOB or TEXT types as an index, the value of N must be supplied so that MySQL can determine the key length. However, MySQL doesn’t support a key length limit on TEXT or BLOB. TEXT(88) simply won’t work.

当您尝试将表列从非TEXT和非BLOB类型(如VARCHAR和ENUM)转换为TEXT或BLOB类型时，错误也会弹出，该列已经被定义为唯一约束或索引。Alter Table SQL命令将失败。

该问题的解决方案是从索引或唯一约束中删除TEXT或BLOB列，或将另一个字段设置为主键。如果您不能这样做，并希望对TEXT或BLOB列进行限制，请尝试使用VARCHAR类型并对其进行长度限制。默认情况下，VARCHAR被限制为255个字符，它的限制必须在声明后的括号内隐式指定，即VARCHAR(200)将限制为仅200个字符长。

Sometimes, even though you don’t use TEXT or BLOB related type in your table, the Error 1170 may also appear. It happens in a situation such as when you specify VARCHAR column as primary key, but wrongly set its length or characters size. VARCHAR can only accepts up to 256 characters, so anything such as VARCHAR(512) will force MySQL to auto-convert the VARCHAR(512) to a SMALLTEXT datatype, which subsequently fails with error 1170 on key length if the column is used as primary key or unique or non-unique index. To solve this problem, specify a figure less than 256 as the size for VARCHAR field.

MySQL错误1170(42000):在键规范中使用的BLOB/TEXT列没有键长度

另一种很好的处理方法是创建没有唯一约束的TEXT字段，并添加一个兄弟VARCHAR字段，该字段是唯一的，并且包含TEXT字段的摘要(MD5、SHA1等)。当您插入或更新TEXT字段时，计算并存储整个TEXT字段的摘要，这样您就可以对整个TEXT字段(而不是一些前面的部分)有一个可以快速搜索的唯一性约束。

另外，如果你想在这个字段中使用索引，你应该使用MyISAM存储引擎和FULLTEXT索引类型。

我曾经用过这个，也犯过你提到的错误:

CREATE INDEX idx_col1 ON my_table (col1);

然后我把它换成了这个，并解决了:

CREATE INDEX idx_col1 ON my_table (col1(255));

alter table authors ADD UNIQUE(name_first(767), name_second(767));

注意:767是MySQL在处理blob/text索引时索引列的字符数限制

参考:http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/innodb-restrictions.html

不要用长值作为主键。这会毁了你的表现。请参阅mysql手册，第13.6.13节“InnoDB性能调优和故障排除”。

相反，使用一个代理int键作为主键(使用auto_increment)，并使用长键作为辅助UNIQUE。