转载自:http://www.mysqltutorial.org/mysql-update-data.aspx
MySQL UPDATE
Summary: updating data is one of the most important tasks when you work with the database. In this tutorial, you will learn how to use the MySQL UPDATE statement to update data in a table.
Introduction to MySQL UPDATE statement
We use the UPDATE
statement to update existing data in a table. We can use the UPDATE
statement to change column values of a single row, a group of rows, or all rows in a table.
The following illustrates the syntax of the MySQL UPDATE
statement:
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UPDATE [LOW_PRIORITY] [IGNORE] table_name
SET
column_name1 = expr1,
column_name2 = expr2,
...
WHERE
condition;
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In the UPDATE
statement:
- First, specify the table name that you want to update data after the
UPDATE
keyword. - Second, the SET clause specifies which column that you want to modify and the new values. To update multiple columns, you use a list comma-separated assignments. You supply the value in each column’s assignment in the form of a literal value, an expression, or a subquery.
- Third, specify which rows to be updated using a condition in the WHERE clause. The
WHERE
clause is optional. If you omit theWHERE
clause, theUPDATE
statement will update all rows in the table.
Notice that the WHERE
clause is so important that you should not forget. Sometimes, you may want to change just one row; However, you may forget the WHERE
clause and accidentally updates all the rows in the table.
MySQL supports two modifiers in the UPDATE
statement.
- The
LOW_PRIORITY
modifier instructs theUPDATE
statement to delay the update until there is no connection reading data from the table. TheLOW_PRIORITY
takes effect for the storage engines that use table-level locking only, for example, MyISAM, MERGE, MEMORY. - The
IGNORE
modifier enables theUPDATE
statement to continue updating rows even if errors occurred. The rows that cause errors such as duplicate-key conflicts are not updated.
MySQL UPDATE examples
Let’s practice the UPDATE
statement with some tables in the MySQL sample database.
MySQL UPDATE a single column example
In this example, we are going to update the email of Mary Patterson
to the new email mary.patterso@classicmodelcars.com
.
First, to make sure that we update the email successfully, we query Mary’s email from the employees
table using the following SELECT
statement:
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SELECT
firstname, lastname, email
FROM
employees
WHERE
employeeNumber = 1056;
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Second, we can update Mary’s email to the new email mary.patterson@classicmodelcars.com
using the UPDATE
statement as the following query:
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UPDATE employees
SET
email = 'mary.patterson@classicmodelcars.com'
WHERE
employeeNumber = 1056;
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Because we just want to update one row, we use the WHERE
clause to specify the row using the employee number 1056
. The SET
clause sets the value of the email column to the new email.
Third, we execute the SELECT
statement again to verify the change.
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SELECT
firstname, lastname, email
FROM
employees
WHERE
employeeNumber = 1056;
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MySQL UPDATE multiple columns
To update values in the multiple columns, you need to specify the assignments in the SET
clause. For example, the following statement updates both last name and email columns of employee number 1056:
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UPDATE employees
SET
lastname = 'Hill',
email = 'mary.hill@classicmodelcars.com'
WHERE
employeeNumber = 1056;
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Let’s check the changes.
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SELECT
firstname, lastname, email
FROM
employees
WHERE
employeeNumber = 1056;
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MySQL UPDATE from SELECT statement example
You can supply the values for the SET
clause from a SELECT
statement that queries data from other tables.
For example, in the customers
table, some customers do not have any sale representative. The value of the column saleRepEmployeeNumber
is NULL
as follows:
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SELECT
customername, salesRepEmployeeNumber
FROM
customers
WHERE
salesRepEmployeeNumber IS NULL;
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We can take a sale representative and update for those customers.
To do this, we can select a random employee whose job title is Sales Rep
from the employees table and update it for the employees table.
This query selects a random employee from the employees
table whose job title is the Sales Rep
.
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SELECT
employeeNumber
FROM
employees
WHERE
jobtitle = 'Sales Rep'
ORDER BY RAND()
LIMIT 1;
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To update the sales representative employee number column in the customers
table, we put the query above in the SET
clause of the UPDATE
statement as follows:
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UPDATE customers
SET
salesRepEmployeeNumber = (SELECT
employeeNumber
FROM
employees
WHERE
jobtitle = 'Sales Rep'
LIMIT 1)
WHERE
salesRepEmployeeNumber IS NULL;
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If you query data from the employees
table, you will see that every customer has a sales representative. In other words, the following query returns no row.
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SELECT
salesRepEmployeeNumber
FROM
customers
WHERE
salesRepEmployeeNumber IS NOT NULL;
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In this tutorial, you have learned how to use MySQL UPDATE
statement to update data in a database table.