Unique Customer ID Numbers

PHP
1

Hi all, I have a table that stores all of our customers, each employee adds their own customers. Currently I’m using rand() to generate a customer ID number. Just concerned that if one-day fate would have it to generate an ID that a customer already has, we’re going to have two customers sharing the same ID, that’s going to cause some serious problems.

Is there a way I can connect to MySQL, see if that id is available if so enter it, if not then generate a unique one. All without the user knowing what’s going on. It needs to be as streamlined as possible.

Any help is appreciated as always :smiley:

2

Forget randomly generating IDs and just use the database to increment the id filed for every new row. Then you will never have duplicate IDs.

3

But my problem with doing it like that is that I have multiple users the system at the same time and they might both submit at the same time?

4

MySQL takes care of that.

5

Really? That’s awesome, I love that :slight_smile: Actually, just had an idea, I could just use the id which is auto-incremented. Think that’s probably the best way? Rather than finding the highest number and incrementing it by 1.

6

If MySQL could not handle such a case, it would have died a long time ago. No one is going to use a database that could be messed up by such a case.

7

That is the only way :slight_smile:

8

Ok cheers guys, appreciate the help and advice :slight_smile: