Question

I wrote the trigger below, but when I insert into the table it doesn’t capitalize the inserted word, like it is supposed to. (no errors either). Any possible solutions?
(I have an employee and an employee2 table, since I read you cant have the trigger in the table it is trying to update).

DELIMITER $$
DROP TRIGGER IF EXISTS mytrigger$$
CREATE TRIGGER mytrigger before INSERT ON employee FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
 update employee2
 SET employee2.FName = CONCAT(UCASE(LEFT(employee2.FName, 1)), LCASE(SUBSTRING(employee2.FName, 2)));
END;
$$
DELIMITER ;

Answer 1

You can have triggers on the table you are trying to update, you just can’t run UPDATE queries. Instead, you modify the data before it is inserted:

DELIMITER $$
DROP TRIGGER IF EXISTS mytrigger$$
CREATE TRIGGER mytrigger before INSERT ON employee FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN
  SET NEW.FName = CONCAT(UCASE(LEFT(NEW.FName, 1)), LCASE(SUBSTRING(NEW.FName, 2)));
END;
$$
DELIMITER ;

The “NEW” keyword gives you access to the data that is going to be inserted.