Question

I have a table with some rows, each row has a unique key. When a row is deleted from the table, all rows that are below this row should be ‘moved up’. Is there some built in function in MySQL that does this or should I just do it with PHP or perhaps UPDATE table SET id=id-1 WHERE id > deletedid?

Using the last one seems a bit messy.
What would be the best way to do this?

Answer 1

1. Why do you want to do this? I know it’s ugly to have holes in your unique ID sequence, but the downside of invalidating any references to IDs from outside the database is normally very much greater. The normal thing is to just accept the sequence won’t be contiguous. If these represent a sequence, consider just sorting by the order rather than expecting the N’th value to have value N (any sort of iteration should provide its own index somewhere for this use).

2. If the value is one you set yourself, and you definitely want to keep it as having values from 1 to N (N=”number of rows”), and you want to keep the sequence of values even if they’re not in the order the rows were inserted, then “UPDATE table SET id=id-1 WHERE id > deletedid” is probably the best answer.

3. If the value is an auto_increment field, and you don’t care which numbers go with with rows as long as each row has a number from 1 to N, you can alternatively do ALTER TABLE DROP COLUMN ‘columnname’ and then ALTER TABLE again to add the column again, and the database will regenerate the ids from 0. (Not necessarily in the same order, though it often is.)

4. There may be a way to renumber only the rows after that point, but (according to a quick google) it doesn’t look like there’s anything easier than what you’re already planning.