Question

If I have an insert statement with a bunch of values where the first value is an id that’s also the primary key to my database, how can I check if everything else in those values is not completely the same and to update the fields that are different? (second part not necessary for an answer, but it’d be nice. If it’s too convoluted to do the second part I can just delete the record first and then insert the full line of updated values)

I’m guessing that it has something to do with SELECT FROM TABLE1 * WHERE id=1 and then somehow do an inequality statement with the INSERT INTO TABLE1 VALUES ('1','A'... etc.) but I’m not sure how to write that.

Edit: I think I asked the question wrong so I’ll try again:

I have a database that has first column id that is a primary key and then a lot of other columns, too long to type out by hand. I have a script that will get data and I will not know if this data is a duplicate or not e.g.

id    value
1     dog
2     cat

if the new info coming in is “1, dog” then I need a signal (say boolean) that tells me true, if the new info is “1, monkey” then I need a signal that tells me false on the match and then update every single field. The question is how do I generate the boolean value that tells me whether the new values with the same id is completely identical to the one in the db? (It has to check every single filed of long list of fields that will take forever to type out, any type of output would be good as long as I can tell one means it’s different and one means it’s the same)

A side question is how do I update the row after that since I don’t want to type out every single field, my temporary solution is to delete the row with the out of date primary id and then insert the new data in but if there is a fast way to update all columns in a row that’d be great.

Answer 1

MySQL can do “on duplicate key update” as part of the insert statement:

INSERT INTO table (id, ...) VALUES ($id, ...)
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE somefield=VALUES(somefield), ...=VALUES(...)

Simple and effective. You only specify the fields you want changed if there is a primary key duplication, and any other fields in the previously-existing record are left alone.