Unique ID

[Anon]

I want to generate a unique id for my application. But I don't want to use "auto_increment", I want to make a id with a character + sequence number. This id for referencing different type of member.

ie.
HAM-10001
HAM-10002
HAM-10003

How can I do that?

Thanks.

[kparker]

Are you sure you need to do this? "Meaningful" ID numbers have a lot of shortcomings. However, if you really do...

Are you using a database? If so, create your own auto-increment table and just update it when you need a new number. This table doesn't have to generate the whole ID, just the numeric portion. If the numbers form part of a single sequence, then you only need a single row, e.g.:

HAM-001
HAM-002
SPAM-003
WOOF-004

If OTOH you need a separate sequence for each ID, then create one row for each prefix, i.e.

create table sequences
(
prefix text,
number int
); // etc

If you don't have a database, you'll have to emulate all the above using files.