CODEWITHSUNDEEP
mysqlsqldatabasedatatablesprimary-key
JokesOnYou
JokesOnYou

Reputation: 23

Making a primary key not "auto-increment" in MySQL?

Is it possible to make a primary key (that is gonna be used as a foreign key) not having auto-increment. Imagine a actor typing in his/her id from a different source. I want to take this random int value and store it as primary

Upvotes: 0

Views: 1774

Answers (1)

derek.wolfe
derek.wolfe

Reputation: 1116

Yes.

You actually have to specify AUTO INCREMENT or data type SERIAL for it to automatically increment values. If your PRIMARY KEY that will be referenced by this FOREIGN KEY is data type SERIAL then you will need to make the FOREIGN KEY's data type BIGINT UNSIGNED. SERIAL is effectively an alias for setting the column to BIGINT UNSIGNED NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT UNIQUE. Setting the the FOREIGN KEY to BIGINT UNSIGNED would give it the same integer range as a serial.

Remember, a PRIMARY KEY must be unique. So if this table is meant to have multiple records that will reference a single record in the other table, you may be better off making a PRIMARY KEY that is type SERIAL and then have another column that is your FOREIGN KEY that is type BIGINT UNSIGNED. This would allow you to have multiple records with the same value for the FOREIGN KEY column but you will still have a valid PRIMARY KEY

Upvotes: 2

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