mysql Multiple Foreign Keys in a Table to the Same Primary Key

Question

I have a table user with userID as the primary key. I have another table called Friends. In the Friends table, I have two Users as friends represented by the columns UserID and FrndID where both UserID and FrndID should be a userID in table user.

I want to enforce data integrity. Could I use something like this?

ADD CONSTRAINT `ufd_users_fk` FOREIGN KEY (`userId`, `friendId`)
REFERENCES `users` (`userId`, `userId`) ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE;

I want to know is REFERENCESusers(userId,userId) referencing a column multiple times correctly? The reason I am not creating 2 separate constraints, is that both users must exist in table user.

Answer 1

No, you should create two foreign keys:

ADD CONSTRAINT `ufd_users_fk` FOREIGN KEY (`userId`) 
  REFERENCES `users` (`userId`) 
  ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE,
ADD CONSTRAINT `ufd_users_fk` FOREIGN KEY (`friendId`) 
  REFERENCES `users` (`userId`) 
  ON DELETE CASCADE ON UPDATE CASCADE;