Insert into a MySQL table or update if exists

Question

I want to add a row to a database table, but if a row exists with the same unique key I want to update the row.

For example:

Answer 1

In case that you wanted to make a non-primary fields as criteria/condition for ON DUPLICATE, you can make a UNIQUE INDEX key on that table to trigger the DUPLICATE.

ALTER TABLE `table` ADD UNIQUE `unique_index`(`name`);

And in case you want to combine two fields to make it unique on the table, you can achieve this by adding more on the last parameter.

ALTER TABLE `table` ADD UNIQUE `unique_index`(`name`, `age`);

Note, just make sure to delete first all the data that has the same name and age value across the other rows.

DELETE table FROM table AS a, table AS b WHERE a.id < b.id 
AND a.name <=> b.name AND a.age <=> b.age;

After that, it should trigger the ON DUPLICATE event.

INSERT INTO table (id, name, age) VALUES(1, "A", 19) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE    
name = VALUES(name), age = VALUES(age)