Question

I currently have a table that is 17 columns wide and has 30 records.

Basically, it’s a table from another site that I’m scraping and then inserting into MySQL table.

$html = str_get_html($newHTML); // get the HTML     
        $tdContents = ""; // declare variable
        $rowArray = array(); // declare array for records
        for ($j = 0; $j < 510; $j++) // loop through each TD element, 17 columns by 30 records so 510
        {
            $f = $html->find("td",$j); // get the td elements from the html
            $tdContents = $f->innertext; // get the text inside the td
            $rowArray[] = $tdContents; // store that text inside the array

            if ($j == 16 || $j == 33 || $j == 50 || $j == 67 || $j == 84 || $j == 101 || $j == 118 || $j == 135 || $j == 152 || $j == 169 || $j == 186 || $j == 203 || $j == 220 || $j == 237 || $j == 254 || $j == 271 || $j == 288 || $j == 305 || $j == 322 || $j == 339 || $j == 356 || $j == 373 || $j == 390 || $j == 407 || $j == 424 || $j == 441 || $j == 458 || $j == 475 || $j == 492 || $j == 509) // every 17 td elements
            {
                $comma_separated = implode("','", $rowArray); // seperate the array contents with commas and apostrophes, set up for mysql
                $comma_separated = "'" . $comma_separated . "'"; // add apostrophes to beginning and end of the string
                $result = mysql_query("INSERT INTO standings_20112012 VALUES (".$comma_separated.")"); // insert the data into mysql
                $rowArray = array(); // clear the array, for the next record

            }
        }

Comments should explain fine. This generates a table 17 x 30 with all info I need. If I run this again, it’ll insert another 30 records, which is bad. I want to only update/overwrite etc. the table that’s already created. So there should only ever be 30 records in the table. I’m stumped with this however.

Any help?

Answer 1

Add a primary key to your dataset that is unique. Then change your mysql query to INSERT IGNORE and it will throw out the duplicates. Alternatively you can can also use a ON DUPLICATE UPDATE if you need to update what you already have in the table.