title: Configure memory boxes
role: manual
tags: #configuration #manual #zettelstore
syntax: zmk
back: 00001004011200
backward: 00001004011200
box-number: 1
copyright: (c) 2020-present by Detlef Stern <ds@zettelstore.de>
created: 20220307112918
lang: en
license: EUPL-1.2-or-later
modified: 20250102222236
published: 20250102222236
visibility: public

Under most circumstances, it is preferable to further configure a memory box.
This is done by appending query parameters after the base box URI ''mem:''.

The following parameters are supported:
|=: Parameter|=Description|=:Default value|=:Maximum value
|:max-bytes|Maximum number of bytes the box will store|:65535|:1073741824 (1 GiB)
|:max-zettel|Maximum number of zettel|:127|:65535
The default values are somehow arbitrarily, but applicable for many use cases.

While the number of zettel should be easily calculable by a user, the number of bytes might be a little more difficult.

Metadata consumes 6 bytes for the zettel identifier and for each metadata value one byte for the separator, plus the length of key and data.
Then size of the content is its size in bytes.
For text content, its the number of bytes for its UTF-8 encoding.

If one of the limits are exceeded, Zettelstore will give an error indication, based on the HTTP status code 507.