MySQL Insert

When data is put into a MySQL table it is referred to as inserting data. When inserting data it is important to remember the exact names and types of the table's columns. If you try to place a 500 word essay into a column that only accepts integers of size three, you will end up with a nasty error!

Inserting Data Into Your Table

Now that you have created your table, let's put some data into that puppy! Here is the PHP/MySQL code for inserting data into the "example" table we created in the previous lesson.

                <?php
                // Make a MySQL Connection
                mysql_connect("localhost", "admin", "1admin") or die(mysql_error());
                mysql_select_db("test") or die(mysql_error());

                // Insert a row of information into the table "example"
                mysql_query("INSERT INTO example
                (name, age) VALUES('Timmy Mellowman', '23' ) ")
                or die(mysql_error());

                mysql_query("INSERT INTO example
                (name, age) VALUES('Sandy Smith', '21' ) ")
                or die(mysql_error());

                mysql_query("INSERT INTO example
                (name, age) VALUES('Bobby Wallace', '15' ) ")
                or die(mysql_error());

                echo "Data Inserted!";

                ?>
              

Display:

This code is much simpler to understand than the create table code, as will be most of the MySQL queries you will learn in the rest of this tutorial. Once again, we will cover the code line by line.

'mysql_query("INSERT INTO example'

Again we are using the mysql_query function. "INSERT INTO" means that data is going to be put into a table. The name of the table we specified to insert data into was "example".

'(name, age) VALUES('Timmy Mellowman', '23' ) ")'

"(name, age)" are the two columns we want to add data into. "VALUES" means that what follows is the data to be put into the columns that we just specified. Here we enter the name Timmy Mellowman for "name", and 23 for "age".

Be sure to note the location and number of apostrophes and parentheses in the PHP code, as this is where a lot of beginner PHP/MySQL programmers run into problems.

Review & Homework

If all goes as well, this .php page will add a three people to the "example" table every time it is run. Be sure to use your MySQL administration program provided by your web host to ensure that the data was inserted into your table correctly.

Be careful not to run this script more than once, otherwise you will be inserting the same people, multiple times. This is called inserting duplicate records and is usually avoided.