Getting

Step 5
With a table all set up lets now insert some data into it. BUT before we do that lets look at our tables workings, enter the following:

DESCRIBE users;

You should see:

Looking at the table structure we can see what values are accepted by which columns.

Well lets now insert some data into our users table, enter the following:

INSERT INTO users SET
name=”Granville Barnett”,
location=”Bradford”,
date=CURDATE();

What we have just done is enter some data into our table. I used a function in mySQL called CURDATE() to create a new date value.

ENTER A FEW DIFFERENT RECORDS USING THE METHOD I JUST SHOWED YOU.

Step 6
We are now going to view the records in our table using SELECT. Enter the following:

SELECT * FROM users;

You will now see:

What you see are the contents of your table.

	Note
I spoke earlier about the AUTO_INCREMENT becoming more noticeable later on, well here you see that the id column is incremented by 1 every time we enter a record – this is the AUTO_INCREMENT in practice.

We can use several various ways to order the way our data presented to us, if we want we can view our table's contents in the order of our users' locations (a...z), lets do that:

SELECT name, location FROM users ORDER BY location;

Press Return/Enter, and you will see just the name and location columns of our table:

I am displaying the two columns for two reasons. The first reason being the clarity of the results – I only wanted to order my results by location (a..z) and I wanted to see the users' names. Second, I specifically wanted to exclude the id and date columns.

	Note
There are many ways to view your data using the SELECT statement – so many that its out of the scope of this tutorial to cover them! To see all the ways (and there are tons of them) visit www.mysql.com.

You are almost done, but before you can celebrate, the next page awaits you. Onward!

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