Question

I am inserting a name, number, and company into a DB.

My table is simply:

id(primary key)
name
slideView
company

I need to update this information if a name passed to it exists, if not create a new row with this data. I have looked at REPLACE INTO but I dont think that will work for me… as I dont touch the ID at all.

My code is:

insertData($name,$count,$company);

function insertData($name, $count, $company) {

    #Try/Catch statement to connect to DB, and insert data
    try {
        #DB username/password   
        $usernameDB = '****';
        $passwordDB = '****';

        #Create new PHP Database Object with the address, username, and password as parameters
        $pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=*****', $usernameDB, $passwordDB);

        #Set pdo attributes to handle errors 
        $pdo->setAttribute(PDO::ATTR_ERRMODE, PDO::ERRMODE_EXCEPTION);

        #assign the sth variable (sth means statement handle) to insert the data
        $sth = $pdo->prepare("REPLACE INTO ***** SET name = ?, slideView = ?, company = ?");

        #Execute the insert
        $sth->execute(array($name,$count,$company));

    #Error if can't connect or insert
    } catch(PDOException $e) {
        echo 'Error: ' . $e->getMessage();
    }#/try
}

I’m new to SQL and havnt found a good way to do this yet.

Answer 1

REPLACE INTO should work just fine – it also checks for columns with UNIQUE constraints. So you would just need to mark your name column as unique so that REPLACE INTO will identify it as duplicate.

I haven’t tried this particular use case, but the documentation seems to allow it.