Remove EncodeUTF8 infavour of using attribute casting only. The implementation of EncodeUTF8 was not correct, essentially removing any previous casting causing issues when saving a record.

app/Models/File.php

@@ -11,12 +11,11 @@ use Illuminate\Support\Facades\DB;
 use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Log;
 use Illuminate\Support\Facades\Storage;
 
-use App\Casts\{CollectionOrNull,CompressedString};
-use App\Traits\EncodeUTF8;
+use App\Casts\{CollectionOrNull,CompressedStringOrNull};
 
 class File extends Model
 {
-	use SoftDeletes,EncodeUTF8;
+	use SoftDeletes;
 
 	private const LOGKEY = 'MF-';
 	private bool $no_export = FALSE;
@@ -28,18 +27,13 @@ class File extends Model
 	protected $casts = [
 		'kludges' => CollectionOrNull::class,
 		'datetime' => 'datetime:Y-m-d H:i:s',
-		'desc' => CompressedString::class,
-		'ldesc' => CompressedString::class,
+		'desc' => CompressedStringOrNull::class,
+		'ldesc' => CompressedStringOrNull::class,
 		'rogue_seenby' => CollectionOrNull::class,
 		'rogue_path' => CollectionOrNull::class,
 		'size' => 'int',
 	];
 
-	private const cast_utf8 = [
-		'desc',
-		'ldesc',
-	];
-
 	public static function boot()
 	{
 		parent::boot();