Question

I am trying to use the insert ignore statement to put a name in a database. I do not want to create duplicates, however, the insert ignore statement I use keeps inserting!

The statement is:

INSERT IGNORE INTO firstname(name) VALUES ('Tommy')

My database shows this:

id  |  name
-------------
1      Tommy
2      Tommy
3      Tommy

A couple bits of information for people helping me. My id is my primary key and it is auto incremented.

My guess is that because the new id is created automatically it thinks its a new result! I am not sure how to solve this expcept with a bigger SQL query checking if the name Tommy exists first

Thanks

Answer 1

It’s because the column name from firstname table is not unique. Try to add unique constraint using this DDL statement,

ALTER TABLE firstname ADD UNIQUE (name);

then try if it still add duplicate name. Hope it works now 🙂