Question

I would like to create a number like:

000000000001

to save to the database. I obviously cannot increment in this fashion (I don’t think) in a database, so I’m looking for the most efficient method for pulling the previous number from the database and incrementing it by 1 to create the next record:

000000000002

and so on…

If I store the first number manually, can I do some sort of manual typing to make it hold its number of zeros? I don’t even know where to start.

Answer 1

All the leading zeroes are just formatting.

>>> "%012d" % ( 1, )
'000000000001'
>>> "%012d" % ( 2, )
'000000000002'

Use an ordinary integer and format it to have lots of leading zeroes.