How to create insert scripts for tables with FK relationships

Question

create table foo(id, val1)
create table foo_bars(id, foo_id, val2)

id is auto generated in the above case.

I want to do the following

insert into foo (val1) values (1)
insert into foo_bars (foo_id, val2) values (?, 2)

How do I fetch the value of foo_id if its not known to me. Do I need to hard-code these id(s) also. Is there an elegant way?

Answer 1

Yes there is an elegant way of determing the last inserted id.

check this for MySQL and this for MySQLi

From their examples:

$query = "INSERT INTO myCity VALUES (NULL, 'Stuttgart', 'DEU', 'Stuttgart', 617000)";
$mysqli->query($query);

printf ("New Record has id %d.\n", $mysqli->insert_id);

Answer 2

According to the mysql site ( http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/getting-unique-id.html )

Try this (if you want to use pure MySQL):

INSERT INTO foo (val1) 
    VALUES(1);         
INSERT INTO foo_bars (foo_id, val2)
    VALUES(LAST_INSERT_ID(),2);  # use ID in second table