When I see examples of creating tables in MySQL, i often see Primary Key used. So i had no idea what it was and researced it...but found nothing out.
For example:
$sql = "create table IF NOT EXISTS Forum
(
UserName varchar(15),
Password varchar(15),
ID int,
Primary Key (ID)
)"
then that is queried to the MySQL database. My question is, what does that Primary Key (ID) thing do? All i know is that it increases the ID value each time the Insert query is called. I think. Can someone please explain it for me?
Thanks in advance.
P.S. - I'm not sure if i wrote that code right either.
I'm pretty sure the point is that it just gives each a unique value.
By chance, you might have two entries that have, for example, the same password, or maybe even the same username (if that's allowed), and you need to have a sure way to distinguish between the different entries. If each has a unique ID, then that will do it for you.
You don't always need one, but they are helpful in lots of cases, and rarely hurt.
Ok, but my code above will just increase ID with each user entry? so that it will make a table in my MySQL database that looks sort of like the following:
ID------UserName
1 Bob
2 Rich
3 Sue
4 Mike
is that the basic idea of it?
Sure. I think that will do fine.
I'm not really familiar with the term "primary key", but I believe that's the point of it... I've just seen it in passing.
The primary key won't auto-increment by default. You need to specify
ID int auto_increment
Right, that's the crucial piece... sorry I forgot to mention it :)
Wait, so in my code do i need to put this?
ID int,
Primary Key (ID) auto_increment
or do i just need to put
ID int auto_increment
?
ID int auto_increment,
primary key(ID)
Allright, thanks.
So then, if the auto_increment increases ID with each Insert query, what does Primary Key do?
Insofar as I know (not a big database guy) just marks it as being the primary, unique, identifying column. The SQL implementation may perform some optimisations to how it runs based on that -- I'm guessing it would usually assign a primary key column itself if none existed.