Question

I’m generating auto incremental code through a PHP script. The sequence goes like this, L001, L002….L039, L040. Below is the PHP code I have written. The comments show the output of each statement.

<?php

require_once("db_handler.php");

$conn = iniCon();
$db = selectDB($conn);

$query = "SELECT LID FROM locations ORDER BY LID DESC LIMIT 1";
$result = mysql_query($query, $conn);
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$last_id = $row['LID'];   //L040

$id_letter = substr($last_id, 0, 1);  //L
$id_num = substr($last_id, 1) + 1;   //040 + 1
$new_id = $id_letter . $id_num;

mysql_close($conn);

?>

I’m displaying the $new_id in a HTML textbox. though everything works fine up to this point, the new generated code shows as L41, cutting off the leading zero.

How can I stop this from happening? I need to have that zero in the front.

Thank you.

Answer 1

Use either str_pad or sprintf function:

$id_num = str_pad($id_num, 3, "0", STR_PAD_LEFT);

or

$id_num = sprintf("%03d", $id_num);