Question

I have only just begun learning about joining tables in MySQL. Now, I have a small project where I simply want to let the visitor insert data through a form. The data is then displayed in a HTML table with four rows, joining together two tables in my database. The “problem” is that the data should be submitted into those two different tables in my database.

I tried

$query = "INSERT INTO table1, table2 (col1, col2, col3, col4) VALUES ('value1', 'value2', 'value3', 'value4')";

but that doesn’t seem to do it. What is the correct syntax for submitting form data to several database tables? Oh, and I read some similar threads mentioning using transactions. Is this necessary? My tables are run with MyISAM. Thanks!

Answer 1

You can read more about it from the MySQL Manual. In short, you cannot insert into multiple tables at once. This leaves you with three options:

1. Multiple INSERT statements
2. Triggers
3. Stored Procedures

The answer to this question: MySQL Insert into multiple tables? (Database normalization?) suggests using transactions, which will not work with MyISAM, but is a good FYI if you ever switch to InnoDB.

I really recommend you read up on Triggers. They can make your life a lot easier. But if you don’t want to use them, look into PHP’s mysqli_multi_query, which will allow you to execute two different queries at the same time, for example:

$query = "INSERT INTO table1 (col1,col2) VALUES ('$value1','$value2');";
$query = "INSERT INTO table2 (col3,col4) VALUES ('$value3','$value4');";
$result = mysqli_multi_query($dbcon, $query);