mySQL insert/add/create abilities

[Anon]

Hello;

 I hope someone here can help me out.  I am working to integrate our site with the Nobil Gateway and I need to create an online user database.

 I want to be able to get user information (Ie. name, addres, email etc) emailed to me then in the background auto increment a account number for that user and save only the account number, name, and email into the database.

 I am have a hard time figuring out how to add/insert/create into mysql.  I am using php3.

 Thanks in advance for any help!

[craigh]

I assume you have briefed yourself on the various MySQL functions built in to PHP in the manual. Basically, you need to:

1) connect to the database server
2) select the database to work with
3) execute some query statement

example:

// connect to MySQL database //
$sqllink = mysql_connect ($server, $uname, $pword)
or die ("Could not connect");

// select msboa database //
$select = mysql_select_db ($dbase)
or die ("could not select $dbase");

From there, you need to execute valid SQL statements using the mysql_query function:

example:
// set SQL statement //
$sql = "INSERT INTO $table3 (name, address, email) VALUES ('$name', '$address', '$email')";

// execute SQL statement //
$result = mysql_query ($sql) or die ("INSERT not successful<BR>".mysql_error());

hope that helps

[Anon]

Craig;
Thank you for your help. That is very usefull, now just one last question. How could I generate the user account number automaticaly (create the line for the information and then relay what line it was).

Thanks again.

[craigh]

I'm not sure you could do that in one step...

you'd have to:

1) insert the data
2) get the account number (ID)

do the insert stuff mentioned above, then

$result = mysql_query ("SELECT ID FROM $table3
WHERE (email = \"$email\");

while ($row = mysql_fetch_array ($result)) {
$account_number = $row["ID"]);
}

echo $account_number;

of course, this is dependent on the fact that you created the $table three with the three previously mentioned columns and also an "ID" column that is AUTO-INCREMENT and UNIQUE and NOT NULL.

[craigh]

check out this function too - it may do what you want.

http://www.php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-insert-id.php

[Anon]

No. Let me explain two things here, cause this explanation here isn't satisfactory in a professional mode:
1. Didn't you ask yourself what happens if a person registered two times and so the email is the same in both registries in database? If that was the case, then the statement above would return TWO IDs, not one. So, though you may never have this problem, it's not good that way.
So, you must use a function called "mysql_insert_id()", which returns the auto increment number generated by a SPECIFIC insert statement. So, you must pass to this function a parameter, if not, it will return the id of the LAST insert statement, ...many people use it without parameter, and that's stupid, cause it's not magic, you must tell the link identifier. Think about this: there could be 100 persons registrating at the same time. That could cause a caos if you just call mysql_insert_id()...
the usage is:

$statement = "INSERT INTO $table(name, email) VALUES('$name', '$email')";
$query = mysql_db_query($dbhost, $statement, $dbconnection);
$id = mysql_insert_id($query);