Need an abstract trigger in MySQL 5.1 to update an audit log

Question

I need a way to check for and pass entries into an audit log for any entries in a table that have been changed. It needs to be abstracted away from the table structure.

For example:

CREATE TRIGGER table1_update 
BEFORE UPDATE ON table1 
FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
  DECLARE i_column_name varchar(32);
  DECLARE done INT;
  DECLARE cursor1 CURSOR FOR SELECT column_name FROM information_schema.columns WHERE table_name = 'table1';
  DECLARE CONTINUE HANDLER FOR NOT FOUND SET done = 1;

  OPEN cursor1;
  REPEAT
    FETCH cursor1 INTO i_column_name;
    IF NOT done THEN

      --pass the variable column_name and its old.i_column_name and new.i_column_name values to the audit table

    END IF;
  UNTIL done END REPEAT;
  CLOSE cursor1;
END$$

We have too many tables that need to be audited to custom build every single INSERT, UPDATE, and DELETE trigger. I've tried a number of things and I'm thinking I'm out of luck. Anyone have any ideas?

Answer 1

You can't have an abstract trigger, it must be defined on a specific table. The closest you can get is to put the code for the trigger into a stored procedure, and then the triggers for each table will just call the procedure.

CREATE PROCEDURE audit_update (IN tablename VARCHAR(64))
BEGIN
  DECLARE  i_column_name varchar(32);
  DECLARE done INT;
  DECLARE cursor1 CURSOR FOR SELECT column_name FROM information_schema.columns WHERE table_name = tablename;
  DECLARE CONTINUE HANDLER FOR NOT FOUND SET done = 1;

  OPEN cursor1;
  REPEAT
    FETCH cursor1 INTO i_column_name;
    IF NOT done THEN

      --pass the variable column_name and its old.i_column_name and new.i_column_name values to the audit table

    END IF;
  UNTIL done END REPEAT;
  CLOSE cursor1;
END


CREATE TRIGGER table1_update 
BEFORE UPDATE ON table1 
FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
  CALL audit_update('table1');
END

You should be able to easily script up something that will create the triggers for all of your tables using the information_schema or something along those lines.

SELECT CONCAT('CREATE TRIGGER ', table_name, '_update BEFORE UPDATE ON ', table_name, ...) FROM information_schema...