On Sat, 2007-03-17 at 09:43 -0500, Myron Turner wrote: > Colin Guthrie wrote: > > Philip Thompson wrote: > > > >> For auto increment values, you don't have to specify the id. For example: > >> > >> INSERT INTO t_users (f_name, l_name, e_mail, b_date, pic) > >> VALUES ('$f_name', '$l_name', '$e_mail', '$b_date', null); > >> > >> Then to find the latest entry: > >> > >> SELECT user_id FROM t_users ORDER BY user_id DESC limit 1; > >> > > > > This is not the cleanest way and some databases do not actually > > increment auto id fields (e.g. they could fill in the blanks from > > previous deletes etc.). > > > > Much better is to use the function in the MySQL API to get the insert id > > or if you really must use SQL, just run "SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID();" which > > does much the same thing. > > > > Col > > > > > My own knowledge of mysql is about 5 years old and never really used. > But I was recently asked to do something that required some mysql > (noting too much, fortunately for me), so I've been doing some reading > and am interested in questions that come up on the list. > > An earlier post called attention to a concurrency problem. Wouldn't > getting the last inserted ID from LAST_INSERT_ID() > suffer from the same limitations as any of the other solutions which do > a select to get the last ID?
No, it's a MySQL specific feature that is atomic with the insert and so you are guaranteed that the the returned ID is the exact automatic ID associated with the most recent INSERT for the connection handle. Unfortunately auto increment is MySQL specific and so it isn't transferrable to other database engines. > I assume if you are completely in control > of the database, you could create a lock file using flock() and remove > the lock once the Id is retrieved using any of these methods. You can, but locking is expensive, especial if there's a lot of activity in the table. > I guess what I'm wondering is whether the simplest suggestion is the one that > would use the email address as a condition in the WHERE clause to > extract the ID? No. Cheers, Rob. -- .------------------------------------------------------------. | InterJinn Application Framework - http://www.interjinn.com | :------------------------------------------------------------: | An application and templating framework for PHP. Boasting | | a powerful, scalable system for accessing system services | | such as forms, properties, sessions, and caches. InterJinn | | also provides an extremely flexible architecture for | | creating re-usable components quickly and easily. | `------------------------------------------------------------' -- PHP General Mailing List (http://www.php.net/) To unsubscribe, visit: http://www.php.net/unsub.php