INSERT IF NOT EXISTS ELSE UPDATE?

I've found a few "would be" solutions for the classic "How do I insert a new record or update one if it already exists" but I cannot get any of them to work in SQLite.

I have a table defined as follows:

CREATE TABLE Book 
ID     INTEGER PRIMARY KEY AUTOINCREMENT,
Name   VARCHAR(60) UNIQUE,
TypeID INTEGER,
Level  INTEGER,
Seen   INTEGER

What I want to do is add a record with a unique Name. If the Name already exists, I want to modify the fields.

Can somebody tell me how to do this please?

Solution 1:

Have a look at http://sqlite.org/lang_conflict.html.

You want something like:

insert or replace into Book (ID, Name, TypeID, Level, Seen) values
((select ID from Book where Name = "SearchName"), "SearchName", ...);

Note that any field not in the insert list will be set to NULL if the row already exists in the table. This is why there's a subselect for the ID column: In the replacement case the statement would set it to NULL and then a fresh ID would be allocated.

This approach can also be used if you want to leave particular field values alone if the row in the replacement case but set the field to NULL in the insert case.

For example, assuming you want to leave Seen alone:

insert or replace into Book (ID, Name, TypeID, Level, Seen) values (
   (select ID from Book where Name = "SearchName"),
   "SearchName",
    5,
    6,
    (select Seen from Book where Name = "SearchName"));

Solution 2:

You should use the INSERT OR IGNORE command followed by an UPDATE command: In the following example name is a primary key:

INSERT OR IGNORE INTO my_table (name, age) VALUES ('Karen', 34)
UPDATE my_table SET age = 34 WHERE name='Karen'

The first command will insert the record. If the record exists, it will ignore the error caused by the conflict with an existing primary key.

The second command will update the record (which now definitely exists)

Solution 3:

You need to set a constraint on the table to trigger a "conflict" which you then resolve by doing a replace:

CREATE TABLE data   (id INTEGER PRIMARY KEY, event_id INTEGER, track_id INTEGER, value REAL);
CREATE UNIQUE INDEX data_idx ON data(event_id, track_id);

Then you can issue:

INSERT OR REPLACE INTO data VALUES (NULL, 1, 2, 3);
INSERT OR REPLACE INTO data VALUES (NULL, 2, 2, 3);
INSERT OR REPLACE INTO data VALUES (NULL, 1, 2, 5);

The "SELECT * FROM data" will give you:

2|2|2|3.0
3|1|2|5.0

Note that the data.id is "3" and not "1" because REPLACE does a DELETE and INSERT, not an UPDATE. This also means that you must ensure that you define all necessary columns or you will get unexpected NULL values.