Increment a database field by 1 - mysql

With MySQL, if I have a field, of say logins, how would I go about updating that field by 1 within a sql command?
I'm trying to create an INSERT query, that creates firstName, lastName and logins. However if the combination of firstName and lastName already exists, increment the logins by 1.
so the table might look like this..
firstName----|----lastName----|----logins
John Jones 1
Steve Smith 3
I'm after a command that when run, would either insert a new person (i.e. Tom Rogers) or increment logins if John Jones was the name used..

Updating an entry:
A simple increment should do the trick.
UPDATE mytable
SET logins = logins + 1
WHERE id = 12
Insert new row, or Update if already present:
If you would like to update a previously existing row, or insert it if it doesn't already exist, you can use the REPLACE syntax or the INSERT...ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE option (As Rob Van Dam demonstrated in his answer).
Inserting a new entry:
Or perhaps you're looking for something like INSERT...MAX(logins)+1? Essentially you'd run a query much like the following - perhaps a bit more complex depending on your specific needs:
INSERT into mytable (logins)
SELECT max(logins) + 1
FROM mytable

If you can safely make (firstName, lastName) the PRIMARY KEY or at least put a UNIQUE key on them, then you could do this:
INSERT INTO logins (firstName, lastName, logins) VALUES ('Steve', 'Smith', 1)
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE logins = logins + 1;
If you can't do that, then you'd have to fetch whatever that primary key is first, so I don't think you could achieve what you want in one query.

This is more a footnote to a number of the answers above which suggest the use of ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE, BEWARE that this is NOT always replication safe, so if you ever plan on growing beyond a single server, you'll want to avoid this and use two queries, one to verify the existence, and then a second to either UPDATE when a row exists, or INSERT when it does not.

You didn't say what you're trying to do, but you hinted at it well enough in the comments to the other answer. I think you're probably looking for an auto increment column
create table logins (userid int auto_increment primary key,
username varchar(30), password varchar(30));
then no special code is needed on insert. Just
insert into logins (username, password) values ('user','pass');
The MySQL API has functions to tell you what userid was created when you execute this statement in client code.

I not expert in MySQL but you probably should look on triggers e.g. BEFORE INSERT.
In the trigger you can run select query on your original table and if it found something just update the row 'logins' instead of inserting new values.
But all this depends on version of MySQL you running.

Related

Do not instert a record if a key is already present

I am a newbie to mysql. Please help.
I have a table people like this. The only primary key of people is id
id name age sex
1. John 16 M
2. Peter 18 K
I would like to write some sql to insert some rows to people. But if the name is already exist
in the table. I do not insert new row. For example, if I insert the row with the name John and
Peter. I do not insert rows.
I have a variable name as var_name;
I have search out for the web for a very long time.
I use the following sql recommend by the web
INSERT into People(name) values(var_name) where not exists(SELECT name from People
where name = var_name)
But the sql syntax error comes out. Why would this happen. And is there any fast way to acheieve my goal.
The best way to do this is to create a unique index on name:
create unique idx_people_name on people(name)
Then, when you insert, use on duplicate key update:
INSERT into People(name)
values(var_name)
on duplicate key update name = values(name);
The update piece does nothing -- it is a "no-op". But this puts the logic in the database and enforces that names need to be unique.
For your query to work, you need insert . . . select. The values clause doesn't take a where statement:
INSERT into People(name)
select var_name
from dual
where not exists(SELECT name from People where name = var_name);
If you have a unique constraint on the name, I believe you can use:
INSERT IGNORE People(name) VALUES (var_name);

Inserting Persons with IDs in one query?

I need to add data to a MySQL database like that:
Person:
pId, nameId, titleId, age
Name:
nameId, name
Title:
titleId, title
I don't want to have any names or title more then once in the db so I didn't see a solution with LAST_INSERT_ID()
My approach looks like that:
INSERT IGNORE INTO Name(name) VALUES ("Peter");
INSERT IGNORE INTO Title(title) VALUES ("Astronaut");
INSERT INTO Person(nameId, titleId, age) VALUES ((SELECT nameId FROM Name WHERE name = "Peter"), (SELECT nameId FROM Name WHERE name = "Astronaut"), 33);
But I guess that's a quite dirty approach!?
If possible I want to add multiple persons with one query and without having anything more then one times in db.
Is this possible in a nice way? Thanks!
You could put title and name as two columns of your table and then:
set one UNIQUE index on each column if you don"t want to have two titles or two names identical in the DB
or set an UNIQUE index on (title,name) if you don't want to have two entries having both the same name and the same title.
If you really want to have separate tables, you could do as you suggested in your post, but wrapping all your insert statements in a TRANSACTION to allow rollback if you detect a duplicate somewhere.
See Design dilemma: If e-mail address already used, send e-mail "e-mail address already registered", but can't because can't add duplicate to table which appear to be exactly the same problem, but having name & email instead of name & titles.
START TRANSACTION;
INSERT INTO title(value) VALUES ("Prof.");
SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID() INTO #title_id;
-- Instead of using user-defined variable,
-- you should be able to use the last_insert_id
-- equivalent from the host language MySQL driver.
INSERT INTO username(value) VALUES ("Sylvain");
SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID() INTO #username_id;
-- Instead of using user-defined variable,
-- you should be able to use the last_insert_id
-- equivalent from the host language MySQL driver.
INSERT INTO account(username_id, email_id) VALUES (#username_id,#title_id);
COMMIT;
See LAST_INSERT_ID()
A third solution would be to SELECT before doing you insert to see in the entry are already present. But personally I wouldn't push to the check-before-set approach at the very least, this will require an extra query which is mostly superfluous if you use correctly indexes.

Combining 2 tables with the same structure but stored in different databases in MySQL

I think I'm looking for a command called "INSERT BUT IGNORE MY INCORRECT KEYS INTO" command...
I have a table on my local machine which looks like this. id is auto-incremented:-
id name
1 bob
2 phil
and another on my server which looks like this:-
id name
1 jane
2 sally
and I want to insert the records from one into the other so I end up with a table with records 1,2,3,4.
If I take the export option in my local phpmyadmin (although I'm not fussy about admin tools) I get this sql:
INSERT INTO mytable (id, name) VALUES (1, 'Bob'),(2, 'Phil')
But I can't run this on the server because of the duplicate keys. I realise I could just edit the sql with a bit of regex, but I'm hoping there's an easier way.
In one of the databases, you can add a value to all of the primary key fields, then there will be no collisions when inserting. Just be sure that you add the same value to every affected table (if you are combining more than one), and every foreign key field referenced by any tables.
Disclaimer: The following will affect all rows. Don't execute it until you are certain you want to.
-- Add 5000 to all ids
UPDATE tbl SET id = id + 5000;
You'll then be able export and to combine the tables by INSERT without collisions. Your export output will look like:
INSERT INTO mytable (id, name) VALUES (5001, 'Bob'),(5002, 'Phil')

mysql replace into alternative

i'm currently using a replace into statement, I have a unique field which will cause it to UPDATE rather than INSERT if it finds a duplicate...
Problem is if it finds a duplicate i can't get to update on a few columns, it just wipes the lot.
Is there a similar "one statement" method where I can just UPDATE what I want?
I've found merge into but don't undertsnad the first bit about merge into table using table
You're going to want to use the INSERT...ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE syntax.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/insert-on-duplicate.html
Here's an example that will try to create a record with an id, birthday, and name. If a record with the id field exists, it will do the update specified. The table has lots of other fields like email address, zip code, etc. I want to leave those fields alone if I update. (REPLACE INTO would lose any of that data if I didn't include it in the REPLACE INTO statement.)
INSERT INTO user (userid,birthday,first_name,last_name)
VALUES (1234,'1980-03-07','Joe','Smith')
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE
birthday = '1980-03-07',
first_name = 'Joe',
last_name = 'Smith';

Fix DB duplicate entries (MySQL bug)

I'm using MySQL 4.1. Some tables have duplicates entries that go against the constraints.
When I try to group rows, MySQL doesn't recognise the rows as being similar.
Example:
Table A has a column "Name" with the Unique proprety.
The table contains one row with the name 'Hach?' and one row with the same name but a square at the end instead of the '?' (which I can't reproduce in this textfield)
A "Group by" on these 2 rows return 2 separate rows
This cause several problems including the fact that I can't export and reimport the database. On reimporting an error mentions that a Insert has failed because it violates a constraint.
In theory I could try to import, wait for the first error, fix the import script and the original DB, and repeat. In pratice, that would take forever.
Is there a way to list all the anomalies or force the database to recheck constraints (and list all the values/rows that go against them) ?
I can supply the .MYD file if it can be helpful.
To list all the anomalies:
SELECT name, count(*) FROM TableA GROUP BY name HAVING count(*) > 1;
There are a few ways to tackle deleting the dups and your path will depend heavily on the number of dups you have.
See this SO question for ways of removing those from your table.
Here is the solution I provided there:
-- Setup for example
create table people (fname varchar(10), lname varchar(10));
insert into people values ('Bob', 'Newhart');
insert into people values ('Bob', 'Newhart');
insert into people values ('Bill', 'Cosby');
insert into people values ('Jim', 'Gaffigan');
insert into people values ('Jim', 'Gaffigan');
insert into people values ('Adam', 'Sandler');
-- Show table with duplicates
select * from people;
-- Create table with one version of each duplicate record
create table dups as
select distinct fname, lname, count(*)
from people group by fname, lname
having count(*) > 1;
-- Delete all matching duplicate records
delete people from people inner join dups
on people.fname = dups.fname AND
people.lname = dups.lname;
-- Insert single record of each dup back into table
insert into people select fname, lname from dups;
-- Show Fixed table
select * from people;
Create a new table, select all rows and group by the unique key (in the example column name) and insert in the new table.
To find out what is that character, do the following query:
SELECT HEX(Name) FROM TableName WHERE Name LIKE 'Hach%'
You will se the ascii code of that 'square'.
If that character is 'x', you could update like this:(but if that column is Unique you will have some errors)
UPDATE TableName SET Name=TRIM(TRAILING 'x' FROM Name);
I'll assume this is a MySQL 4.1 random bug. Somes values are just changing on their own for no particular reason even if they violates some MySQL constraints. MySQL is simply ignoring those violations.
To solve my problem, I will write a prog that tries to resinsert every line of data in the same table (to be precise : another table with the same caracteristics) and log every instance of failures.
I will leave the incident open for a while in case someone gets the same problem and someone else finds a more practical solution.