diff --git a/src/MariaTypes.cpp b/src/MariaTypes.cpp
index 4f560edb..bb396d58 100644
--- a/src/MariaTypes.cpp
+++ b/src/MariaTypes.cpp
@@ -5,6 +5,7 @@
 bool all_raw(SEXP x);
 
 MariaFieldType variable_type_from_field_type(enum_field_types type, bool binary, bool length1) {
+
   switch (type) {
   case MYSQL_TYPE_TINY:
   case MYSQL_TYPE_SHORT:
@@ -53,7 +54,8 @@ MariaFieldType variable_type_from_field_type(enum_field_types type, bool binary,
   case MYSQL_TYPE_NULL:
     return MY_INT32;
   default:
-    cpp11::stop("Unimplemented MAX_NO_FIELD_TYPES: %d", type);
+    cpp11::warning("unrecognized field type %i imported as character", type);
+    return MY_STR;
   }
 }
 
diff --git a/tests/testthat/test-dbWriteTable.R b/tests/testthat/test-dbWriteTable.R
index 2528c5c0..f3b6a5cf 100644
--- a/tests/testthat/test-dbWriteTable.R
+++ b/tests/testthat/test-dbWriteTable.R
@@ -85,10 +85,11 @@ test_that("writing and reading JSON (#127)", {
   x <- data.frame(col1 = "[1,2,3]", stringsAsFactors = FALSE)
 
   dbWriteTable(con, "t1", x, field.types = c(col1 = "json"), overwrite = TRUE, temporary = TRUE)
-  dbReadTable(con, "t1")
 
-  expect_equal(
-    gsub(" ", "", dbReadTable(con, "t1")$col1),
-    x$col1
-  )
+  suppressWarnings(d <- dbReadTable(con, "t1"))
+
+  # MySQL 8 returns "[1, 2, 3]", while MariaDB returns "[1,2,3]"
+  d$col1 <- gsub('\\s', '', d$col1)
+
+  expect_equal(d, x)
 })