I completely disagree. The PHP manuals do have some shortcomings, but at the level of finding out, "How can I retrieve the autoincrement column after an insert in mysql?" they're completely adequate.
Here's the algorithm:
Go to the manual page for the mysql functions
(http://www.php.net/manual/en/ref.mysql.php)
Look at the name and brief description of each function on that master page. This shouldn't take long, there are only 41 of them, and the description is a short sentence or phrase.
In the unlikely event that the mysql master page doesn't show you which function you need, you will need to start looking at the individual function's pages, skipping (of course) any of those whose descriptions make it clear that they aren't the solution.
In this current case, while it certainly possible that there may be some folks for whom the description "mysql_insert_id — Get the id generated from the previous INSERT operation" isn't fully informative, I can't imagine it not being good enough for anyone who could formulate the original question here! :-)
