Question

How can I SELECT the last row in a MySQL table?

I’m INSERTING data and I need to retrieve a column value from the previous row.

(I’m using PHP by the way.)
the table1 something like this

table1
******************
cate_id | task_id | start_date  |     end_date | line |

 1         2        30/04/2012      26/06/2012    text
 3         1        26/06/2012      27/06/2012    text
 2         1        27/06/2012      01/01/9999    text

There’sNO an auto_incrementin that table.

And my case is to update the existing last row in table and then insert a new one.

Answer 1

You’ve edited question so, here’s update

SELECT MAX(cate_id) AS last_cate_id FROM table;

or you can get next ID by:

SELECT MAX(cate_id)+1 AS next_cate_id FROM table;

Without transactions this is very vulnerable for inserting same cate_id!

If you cant use them, for example because of MyISAM, you could insert with select.

INSERT INTO table
(cate_id, task_id ..)
VALUES
( (SELECT MAX(cate_id)+1 AS next_cate_id FROM table), 1 )