MySQL Trigger - Storing a SELECT in a variable

Question

I have a trigger in which I want to have a variable that holds an INT I get from a SELECT, so I can use it in two IF statements instead of calling the SEL

Answer 1

I'm posting this solution because I had a hard time finding what I needed. This post got me close enough (+1 for that thank you), and here is the final solution for rearranging column data before insert if the data matches a test.

Note: this is from a legacy project I inherited where:

1. The Unique Key is a composite of rridprefix + rrid
2. Before I took over there was no constraint preventing duplicate unique keys
3. We needed to combine two tables (one full of duplicates) into the main table which now has the constraint on the composite key (so merging fails because the gaining table won't allow the duplicates from the unclean table)
4. on duplicate key is less than ideal because the columns are too numerous and may change

Anyway, here is the trigger that puts any duplicate keys into a legacy column while allowing us to store the legacy, bad data (and not trigger the gaining tables composite, unique key).

BEGIN
  -- prevent duplicate composite keys when merging in archive to main
  SET @EXIST_COMPOSITE_KEY = (SELECT count(*) FROM patientrecords where rridprefix = NEW.rridprefix and rrid = NEW.rrid);

  -- if the composite key to be introduced during merge exists, rearrange the data for insert
  IF @EXIST_COMPOSITE_KEY > 0
  THEN

    -- set the incoming column data this way (if composite key exists)

    -- the legacy duplicate rrid field will help us keep the bad data
    SET NEW.legacyduperrid = NEW.rrid;

    -- allow the following block to set the new rrid appropriately
    SET NEW.rrid = null;

  END IF;

  -- legacy code tried set the rrid (race condition), now the db does it
  SET NEW.rrid = (
    SELECT if(NEW.rrid is null and NEW.legacyduperrid is null, IFNULL(MAX(rrid), 0) + 1, NEW.rrid)
    FROM patientrecords
    WHERE rridprefix  = NEW.rridprefix
  );
END