[Leafgreen]

In PHPMyAdmin, how can I duplicate a record in a table?

[r937]

off the top of my head, you can't

a table should have a primary key, and a primary key is by definition unique

therefore you can't duplicate an entire "record"

(note: in relational databases, they are rows, not records)

if you want some other variant of duplication, you will have to give us some more specifics

[Leafgreen]

Hi r937 and Thank you for your reply. I see what you mean about the primary key. Ok, then if you wanted to duplicate all the information in a row, and make a new row except with an incremented value for the primary key, how would you do that?

[r937]

i would do it like this:

INSERT 
  INTO daTable
     ( list all columns except auto_increment )
SELECT list all columns except auto_increment
  FROM daTable
 WHERE id = nnn /* where nnn is the id of the row i want to copy */

[georgev]

But why..?

[r937]

reasons why: let me show u them

1. because the original poster asked for it
2. see 1.

[georgev]

"u" ?
EDIT: Mr

[r937]

george, google this as a phrase: "let me show you it"

[georgev]

...something to do with roflcats...?

I still don't geddit

[r937]

that is right, the http://icanhascheezburger.com lolcats

[Leafgreen]

George: I guess I am missing something based on your response, "But why?" My frequent scenario is that I have a table with about 30 columns, and each cell has a significant amount of data. But sometimes, I need to add a row with very similar data as an existing row. So the quickest way to add a row with mostly the same data is to
1. duplicate it with an incremental primary key, then
2. make the minor change(s) in the new row's cells as I wish.
This is much quicker than adding a new, empty row and then re-typing or copying and pasting into each of the 30 cells. Geddit? What would you do in this scenario?

Rudy: thanks for your answer.

[georgev]

Dear me, appear to have missed this here thread.

I'm glad you've come up with a justification for doing this - my "but why?" was aimed at finding this out exactly!

Call my a cynic, but generally when people ask this it is because their design is flawed - 99% of the time duplicate data is redundant data.

And anyhow, I would still approach it wish a single insert which included the minor changes, rather than running >1 query to produce the record.

If you simply want to duplicate with the new seed - Rudy's response will give you that.

P.S. Rudy, thanks for the PM - it did make me chuckle