Question

I am using Php to insert values into MySQL table.

What i am trying to do is:
There are three columns that i have to check. ‘namel1’, ‘namel2’ and ‘namel3’.

Conditions:

• If ‘$name’ does’t exist in any of the three column then put value in ‘namel1’.
• If ‘$name’ exist in ‘namel1’ then put value in ‘namel2’ and if ‘namel2’ contains the value then put it in ‘namel3’.

My current MySQL query to insert name and image path is this i want to modify it to meet above conditions:

$chk_img_db = mysql_query("select * from cvapptable where img_path='$cvh_myimg_url'");
if(mysql_num_rows($chk_img_db)<1) {
mysql_query("insert into cvapptable(namel1,img_path) values ('$name','$cvh_myimg_url')");
}

I unable to get any solution from web.
Please help. Thank you.

Answer 1

It’s not easy to find on the net because it’s a situation you shouldn’t get yourself into.

You should consider normalizing the table.

Instead of having a table with the columns:

cvapp: id | img_path | namel1 | namel2 | namel3

Consider changing it to two tables:

cvapp: id | img_path
names: id | cvapp_id   | name

To then select every name, you just do a query like so:

SELECT name
  FROM cvapp INNER JOIN names on cvapp.id = names.cvapp_id
 WHERE <condition>

That way, you can have as many names as you want, and it’s much easier to insert a new one:

INSERT INTO names (cvapp_id, name) VALUES (56, "Name 1");
INSERT INTO names (cvapp_id, name) VALUES (56, "Name 2");
INSERT INTO names (cvapp_id, name) VALUES (56, "Name 3");