Question

I am implementing employee attendance system.
Can you please tell me what is wrong in the following query:

INSERT INTO tbtimedetail (outTime) VALUES (NOW()) WHERE empID= '$empid_var' and outTime='NULL';

Structure of tbtimedetail is:

CREATE TABLE tbTimeDetail(
timeID Int PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
empID Int(5),
dateDetail Date NOT NULL,
inTime Time NOT NULL,
outTime Time NOT NULL,
FOREIGN KEY (empID) REFERENCES tbempdetail (empID)
);

Answer 1

insert only adds rows to a database. A where filter doesn’t make sense in that case.

It looks like you’re trying to update existing rows:

update tbtimedetail
  set outTime = NOW()
  WHERE empID= '$empid_var' and outTime is NULL;