Question

phpMyAdmin will not allow me to add a new field to my database — the new field is:

Field: itemCount
Type:  INT
Length: 5
Default: 'As Defined:'  1
AUTO_INCREMENT: yes

The error I get from phpMyAdmin is:

Error

SQL query:

ALTER TABLE `useritems` CHANGE `itemCount` `itemCount` INT( 5 ) NOT NULL DEFAULT '1' AUTO_INCREMENT

MySQL said: #1067 - Invalid default value for 'itemCount' 

(note: the single quotes around the ‘1’ in the error message are not mine — I simply type 1
into phpMyAdmin for the new field.)

I don’t get why I can create an INT, ‘auto-increment’ field but phpMyAdmin says “you can’t set an INT to a default value of 1”

I tried setting it to zero, same error.
I tried making this the primary key field; and I tried it without making the field the primary key. Same error.

How do I get phpMyAdmin to allow me to create an INT field that is auto-increment with a default value of 1 or zero?

Answer 1

By default, for any auto-increment column, the counting starts from 1. If you want to set it to anything higher than that, you may use following Alter query:

ALTER TABLE mytable AUTO_INCREMENT = value;