How to create a new table in mysql
To create a new table in MySQL, you can use the CREATE TABLE
statement. Here is the basic syntax:
CREATE TABLE table_name (
column1 data_type,
column2 data_type,
...
);
Here, table_name
is the name of the table you want to create, and column1
, column2
, etc. are the names of the columns in the table. data_type
is the data type of each column, such as int
, varchar
, datetime
, etc.
For example, to create a table called employees
with columns id
, name
, and email
, you would use the following statement:
CREATE TABLE employees (
id INT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(50),
email VARCHAR(100)
);
This statement creates a table with three columns: id
, name
, and email
. The id
column is an integer and is set as the primary key, which means it will be used to uniquely identify each row in the table. The name
and email
columns are both strings, with a maximum length of 50 and 100 characters, respectively.
You can also specify additional options when creating a table, such as:
AUTO_INCREMENT
: sets the column to automatically increment by 1 for each new row inserted.UNIQUE
: sets the column to ensure that each value is unique.INDEX
: creates an index on the column, which can improve query performance.DEFAULT
: sets a default value for the column.
For example:
CREATE TABLE employees (
id INT PRIMARY KEY AUTO_INCREMENT,
name VARCHAR(50) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(100) UNIQUE,
hire_date DATE DEFAULT '2020-01-01'
);
This statement creates a table with four columns: id
, name
, email
, and hire_date
. The id
column is an integer and is set as the primary key, with an auto-incrementing value. The name
column is a string and is not null. The email
column is a string and is unique. The hire_date
column is a date and has a default value of '2020-01-01'.
You can also create a table with a foreign key, which is a column that references the primary key of another table. For example:
CREATE TABLE departments (
id INT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(50)
);
CREATE TABLE employees (
id INT PRIMARY KEY,
department_id INT,
FOREIGN KEY (department_id) REFERENCES departments(id)
);
This statement creates two tables: departments
and employees
. The employees
table has a column called department_id
that references the id
column of the departments
table. This means that each employee is associated with a specific department.
Note: You can also use the CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS
statement to create a table only if it does not already exist. For example:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS employees (
id INT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(50),
email VARCHAR(100)
);
This statement creates the employees
table only if it does not already exist. If the table already exists, the statement does nothing.