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Editorial Team
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Asked: 2026-05-27T21:55:42+00:00

I have a tab separated text file in the format id | field 1

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I have a tab separated text file in the format

id | field 1 | field 2 ...

I want to insert this into a mysql database with id as the primary key but the text file may contain duplicate id’s .

  1. How to make sure that there’s just one entry corresponding to each id.
  2. How to make a choice between two lines having the same id (Yes, they might not be consistent, but it’s okay to choose one over other like the first or the last occurrence )
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1 Answer

  1. Editorial Team

    I would do a SELECT before INSERT and count the number of rows returned by the SELECT. Something like this:

    SELECT * FROM yourTable WHERE yourTable.id = :id

    If that returns any row, don’t insert and go to next. Otherwise insert it.

    Edit: This would be a post strategy. It would be good if you could add a Unique Constraint to guarantee uniqueness. Something like:

    ALTER TABLE yourTable ADD CONSTRAINT ukID UNIQUE (id)
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