Insert Data Into a Database Table
The INSERT INTO statement is used to add new records to a database table.
Syntax
It is possible to write the INSERT INTO statement in two forms.
The first form doesn’t specify the column names where the data will be inserted, only their values:
VALUES (value1, value2, value3,…)
The second form specifies both the column names and the values to be inserted:
VALUES (value1, value2, value3,…)
To learn more about SQL, please visit our SQL tutorial.
To get PHP to execute the statements above we must use the mysqli_query() function. This function is used to send a query or command to a MySQL connection.
Example
In the previous chapter we created a table named “Persons”, with three columns; “FirstName”, “LastName” and “Age”. We will use the same table in this example. The following example adds two new records to the “Persons” table:
$con=mysqli_connect(“example.com”,”peter”,”abc123″,”my_db”);
// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno())
{
echo “Failed to connect to MySQL: ” . mysqli_connect_error();
}
mysqli_query($con,”INSERT INTO Persons (FirstName, LastName, Age)
VALUES (‘Peter’, ‘Griffin’,35)”);
mysqli_query($con,”INSERT INTO Persons (FirstName, LastName, Age)
VALUES (‘Glenn’, ‘Quagmire’,33)”);
mysqli_close($con);
?>
Insert Data From a Form Into a Database
Now we will create an HTML form that can be used to add new records to the “Persons” table.
Here is the HTML form:
<body>
<form action=”insert.php” method=”post”>
Firstname: <input type=”text” name=”firstname”>
Lastname: <input type=”text” name=”lastname”>
Age: <input type=”text” name=”age”>
<input type=”submit”>
</form>
</body>
</html>
When a user clicks the submit button in the HTML form, in the example above, the form data is sent to “insert.php”.
The “insert.php” file connects to a database, and retrieves the values from the form with the PHP $_POST variables.
Then, the mysqli_query() function executes the INSERT INTO statement, and a new record will be added to the “Persons” table.
Here is the “insert.php” page:
$con=mysqli_connect(“example.com”,”peter”,”abc123″,”my_db”);
// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno())
{
echo “Failed to connect to MySQL: ” . mysqli_connect_error();
}
$sql=”INSERT INTO Persons (FirstName, LastName, Age)
VALUES
(‘$_POST[firstname]’,’$_POST[lastname]’,’$_POST[age]’)”;
if (!mysqli_query($con,$sql))
{
die(‘Error: ‘ . mysqli_error($con));
}
echo “1 record added”;
mysqli_close($con);
?>
