PHP and MySQL for Dynamic Web Sites: Visual QuickPro Guide

Inserting Records

After your database and its table(s) have been created, you can start populating them using the INSERT command. There are two formats for inserting data. With the first, you specify the columns to be used:

INSERT INTO tablename (column1, column2 ...) VALUES ('value1', 'value2', ...);
INSERT INTO tablename (column4, column8) VALUES ('valueX', 'valueY');

Using this structure, you can add rows of records, populating only the columns that matter. The result will be that any columns not given a value will be treated as NULL (or given a default value, if that was defined). Note that if a column cannot have a NULL value (it was set as NOT NULL), not specifying a value will cause an error.

The second format for inserting records ...