Question

I have 2 instances of a program, accessing 1 table in a database.
Table points

game    |  player1  |  player2
--------|-----------|-----------
Poker   |    5      |   
Skat    |    8      |    4
Bridge  |           |   10

If player1, using the first instance, wants to save his points (e.g. Poker) into the table, it has to be made sure, whether Poker is already there. If not, Poker will be inserted together with the points of player1. But if Poker was already inserted by player2, only the points of player1 should be inserted (the row should only be altered).

How can I make sure, that every sort of game is only inserted once and in this case only the points are inserted (altered)?
I think, the column game has to be unique.

My solution is to query the sort of game at first and check the number of rows. If there are 0 rows, insert the game and points, if there is already 1 row, only insert the points.
But is there a better/faster solution, whithout querying at first?

Answer 1

INSERT INTO points (game,player1) VALUES ('Poker',5)
    ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE player1=5;

For more information, see the MySQL documentation: INSERT … ON DUPLICATE KEY Syntax.