Question

I am trying to prevent duplicates from occuring using the following query, but it doesnt seem to work. Please could you tell me what the problem is?

INSERT IGNORE INTO Following SET `followingUserID` = '$accountIDToFollow', `followerUserID` = '$accountID'

Answer 1

INSERT IGNORE INTO 
    Following (`followingUserID`,`followerUserID`) 
VALUE 
   ('$accountIDToFollow','$accountID')

You were doing an UPDATE format before

If you are trying to do an update this is how it works

UPDATE followingUserID
SET
followingUserID = ‘$accountIDToFollow’,
WHERE
followerUserID = ‘$accountID’;

Of course you want to replace the were clause with the correct condition you want to do