SQL - How to find the highest number in a column?

Question

Let\'s say I have the following data in the Customers table: (nothing more)

ID   FirstName   LastName
-------------------------------
20   John        Macken         


        

Answer 1

To find the next (still not used) auto-increment, I am using this function for somewhat years now.

public function getNewAI($table)
    {
        $newAI = false;

        $mysqli = new mysqli(DB_HOST, DB_USER, DB_PASSWORD, DB_NAME);
        if(mysqli_connect_errno()) {
            echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: " . mysqli_connect_error();
        }

        $sql = "SHOW TABLE STATUS LIKE '".$table."'";

        $result = $mysqli->query($sql);

        if($result) {
            $row = $result->fetch_assoc();

            $newAI = $row['Auto_increment'];
        }
        $mysqli->close();

        return $newAI;
    }