Best way to avoid duplicate entry into mysql database

Question

I have a table with 3 columns - id (pk), pageId (fk), name. I have a php script which dumps about 5000 records into the table, with about half being duplicates, with same pa

Answer 1

You can set the PageID and Name to a Unique index in the MySQL database. This way when you insert the rows, it will cause an error, which can be ignored by PHP, and you can just go to the next row.

This assumes you are inserting rows individually. AKA:

foreach($large_data as $fields)
{
    mysql_query("INSERT INTO TABLE (`Something`) VALUES('".$fields['something']."');
}