The INSERT statement

The insert statement is used to insert records into a table. The keywords used in an insert statement are summarised in the following table.

The following example inserts two records into the search table.

insert.sql

INSERT INTO search (Category,
        Page,
        Directory,
        LinkName,
        Keywords,
        Description)
    VALUES ('ASP',
        'cookies.html',
        'http://www.juicystudio.com/tutorial/asp/',
        'Reading Cookies',
        'request,cookies,key,subkey,domain',
        'Using the Request object to read cookies in ASP');

INSERT INTO search (Category,
        Page,
        Directory,
        LinkName,
        Keywords,
        Description)
    VALUES ('PHP',
        'cookies.html',
        'http://www.juicystudio.com/tutorial/php/',
        'Using Cookies',
        'cookies,setting,retrieving,reading,setcookie,isset',
        'Using cookies in PHP');

The file may then be used with MySQL as follows:

mysql> \. insert.sql

If a field in your table allows NULL values, you may omit the field from the INSERT statement.

Characters that require Escaping

The following characters have a special meaning to MySQL, and will need to be escaped by putting a backslash before them in order that they are interpreted correctly.

The following example shows how you would escape an underscore in the string, "last_modified".

'last\_modified'

You can escape single quotes by placing two single quotes together, as in the following example.

'Don''t care!'