How to check if a value already exists to avoid duplicates?

Question

I\'ve got a table of URLs and I don\'t want any duplicate URLs. How do I check to see if a given URL is already in the table using PHP/MySQL?

Answer 1

The answer depends on whether you want to know when an attempt is made to enter a record with a duplicate field. If you don't care then use the "INSERT... ON DUPLICATE KEY" syntax as this will make your attempt quietly succeed without creating a duplicate.

If on the other hand you want to know when such an event happens and prevent it, then you should use a unique key constraint which will cause the attempted insert/update to fail with a meaningful error.