MySQL Problem

[Anon]

Ive got a PHP script inserting information into a MySql database... only problem is some fields (fax #, mobile #, and pager #) dont always apply to people who have their information entered. However, if I dont insert something in these fields, the sql query won't execute. How do I make it so that I dont have to fill out a column in a database and it will still add the rest of the info and that column will just be empty? Thanks in advance for any help; I really appreciate it.

• Dave

[[deleted]]

If you print the query that is about to insert it will probably look like this:

INSERT INTO table
(phone,fax)
VALUES
(5551234,)

obviously this is bad syntax.
One solution would be to use PHP to check for empty phone/fax values and replace empty values with 0 (zero) Then in the code that displays it you can replace a single zero with an empty string or 'none' or 'n/a'.

Another solution which is more complex, would be to actually build the sql statement dynamically,
so you'd only add fields to the statement if those fields have values:

INSERT INTO table
(phone)
VALUES
(5551234)