Question

So I’m writing a script that can hopefully populate my database with new values. The data has a one to one correspondance by the order they’re in. The data are stored inside of an array in PHP. So the first row will map to the first element that I have, second row and second data, and so on.

I’m planning on just echo’ing it and piping the sql ALTER statement from the command prompt. So my question is, how can I ALTER a row by adding/changing new data to a certain column without knowing the ID. All I have is the 1 to 1 correspondance in the order that they’re in.

Thanks, any help is much appreciated.

EDIT:

| id  | key                               | name               | address             

+-----+-----------------------------------+--------------------+----------------
|   1 | quests_buildloggingcamp_type      | Build              |                            
|
|   3 | quests_buildquarry_type           | Build              |                 

So I have this data in another document.

1. 394 cakeville road.       
2. 2912 mark street.
3. more addresses...

I want to add the first address to the first row (id = 1), and second address to second row (id = 3). I can increment the ID each time, but because I’ve deleted a row, ID=2 is missing, I want to add them correctly without skipping any addresses because I have the same amount of rows as addresses.

Answer 1

If you have a PRIMARY KEY or UNIQUE KEY on a table then something like this will work for you:

e.g. If you have a UNIQUE KEY on column a then do:

INSERT INTO table (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3)
ON DUPLICATE KEY 
       UPDATE b = 2,
              c = 3;

For syntax and examples visit here

EDIT: try this query inside you loop inside script for updating every record to next row:

Outside loop for one time:

UPDATE table
SET address = '';

Inside loop:

UPDATE table
SET address = 'new address'
WHERE address = ''
ORDER BY id ASC
LIMIT 1;