Question

I need something real simple, that for some reason I am unable to accomplish up to this point.

I have also been unable to Google the answer surprisingly. I need to number the entries in different tables uniquely. I am aware of AUTO INCREMENT in MySQL and that it will be involved. My situation would be as follows:

If I had a table like

Table EXAMPLE

   ID - INTEGER
   FIRST_NAME - VARCHAR(45)
   LAST_NAME - VARCHAR(45)
   PHONE - VARCHAR(45)
   CITY - VARCHAR(45)
   STATE - VARCHAR(45)
   ZIP - VARCHAR(45)

This would be the setup for the table where ID is an integer that is auto-incremented every time an entry is inserted into the table. The thing I need is that I do not want to have to account for this field when inserting data into the database. From my understanding this would be a surrogate key, that I can tell the database to automatically increment and I do not have to include it in the INSERT STATEMENT

So, instead of:

 INSERT INTO EXAMPLE VALUES (2,'JOHN','SMITH',333-333-3333,'NORTH POLE'....

I can leave out the first ID column and just write something like:

INSERT INTO EXAMPLE VALUES ('JOHN','SMITH'.....etc)

Notice I wouldn’t have to define the ID column…

I know this is a very common task to do, but for some reason I cant get to the bottom of it.

I am using MySQL, just to clarify.

Thanks a lot

Answer 1

This:

INSERT INTO EXAMPLE VALUES ('JOHN','SMITH'.....etc)

…will return a MySQL Error #1136, because the number of columns in the table do not match the number of columns specified in the VALUES clause. So you have two options:

1. Use NULL to fill in the autoincrement column value. IE:

   INSERT INTO EXAMPLE VALUES (NULL, 'JOHN','SMITH'.....etc)
   

2. Specify the list of columns for the table that values are being provided for. IE:

   INSERT INTO EXAMPLE 
     (FIRST_NAME, LAST_NAME, PHONE, CITY, STATE, ZIP)
   VALUES 
     ('JOHN','SMITH'.....etc)