Insert Data Into a Database Table

The INSERT INTO statement is used to add new records to a database table.

Syntax

It is possible to write the INSERT INTO statement in two forms.

The first form doesn't specify the column names where the data will be inserted, only their values:

INSERT INTO table_name
VALUES (value1, value2, value3,...)

The second form specifies both the column names and the values to be inserted:

INSERT INTO table_name (column1, column2, column3,...)
VALUES (value1, value2, value3,...)

To learn more about SQL, please visit our SQL tutorial.

To get PHP to execute the statements above we must use the mysqli_query() function. This function is used to send a query or command to a MySQL connection.

Example

In the previous chapter we created a table named "Persons", with three columns; "FirstName", "LastName" and "Age". We will use the same table in this example. The following example adds two new records to the "Persons" table:

<?php
$con=mysqli_connect("example.com","peter","abc123","my_db");
// Check connection
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
  echo "Failed to connect to MySQL: " . mysqli_connect_error();
}

mysqli_query($con,"INSERT INTO Persons (FirstName, LastName, Age)
VALUES ('Peter', 'Griffin',35)");

mysqli_query($con,"INSERT INTO Persons (FirstName, LastName, Age)
VALUES ('Glenn', 'Quagmire',33)");

mysqli_close($con);
?>