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up vote 5 down vote favorite

I have a table that contains a char(36) field for a uuid. It seems like I can insert data into that field with a mysql query like: INSERT INTO mytable (uid, event_guid) VALUES (1, uuid());. I'd like to make a query like that in DBTNG syntax, but I believe I will just insert the string "uuid()" into the column.

db_insert('mytable')
  ->fields(array('uid' => $uid, 'event_guid' => 'uuid()'))
  ->execute();

So...do I just use db_query? Is there some magic in dbtng to handle this?

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1  
I think you're stuck with db_query for that one, db_insert doesn't have an expression() method...unless your table has a primary key that isn't the uuid column, in which case you might be able to ever-so-slightly abuse db_merge() which does have that method – Clive♦ Dec 4 '12 at 0:30
Expressions are used from the MergeQuery class when the table needs to be updated, not to insert new data in the database. See MergeQuery::execute(), in particular the part after if ($this->needsUpdate) {. – kiamlaluno♦ Dec 4 '12 at 17:47
I created an issue for this idea drupal.org/node/1858188 – greggles Dec 7 '12 at 16:01

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

Here's what I ultimately did:

db_query("INSERT INTO {mytable} (uid, event_guid) VALUES (:uid, uuid())",
array(':uid' => $uid));

And that works to use the mysql uuid() function in an insert.

I've created an issue to add this to Drupal 8 http://drupal.org/node/1858188

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up vote 0 down vote

You can use function calls in the fields array. The following code should just work:

db_insert('mytable')
  ->fields(array('uid' => $uid, 'event_guid' => uuid()))
  ->execute();

If you wanted to insert multiple entries in a loop something like this would work:

$event_guid = uuid();
foreach($entries as $entry) {
  $entry['event_guid'] = $event_guid;
  db_insert('mytable')
    ->fields($entry)
    ->execute();
}
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2  
greggles want to use mysql's uuid function with in db_insert() not a php function :( – Mathankumar Dec 4 '12 at 7:42
Knowing greggles, I would not think he is asking how to use the output from a PHP function for a query. He made that clear when he showed the equivalent SQL query he would use without the Drupal database API. – kiamlaluno♦ Dec 4 '12 at 9:51
Yeah, unfortunately this won't work, as kiamlaluno and Mathankumar pointed out. – greggles Dec 4 '12 at 15:22

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