SQL Insert into table only if record doesn't exist [duplicate]

Answer 1

Assuming you cannot modify DDL (to create a unique constraint) or are limited to only being able to write DML then check for a null on filtered result of your values against the whole table

FIDDLE

insert into funds (ID, date, price) 
select 
    T.* 
from 
    (select 23 ID,  '2013-02-12' date,  22.43 price) T  
        left join 
    funds on funds.ID = T.ID and funds.date = T.date
where 
    funds.ID is null

Answer 2

This might be a simple solution to achieve this:

INSERT INTO funds (ID, date, price)
SELECT 23, DATE('2013-02-12'), 22.5
  FROM dual
 WHERE NOT EXISTS (SELECT 1 
                     FROM funds 
                    WHERE ID = 23
                      AND date = DATE('2013-02-12'));

p.s. alternatively (if ID a primary key):

 INSERT INTO funds (ID, date, price)
    VALUES (23, DATE('2013-02-12'), 22.5)
        ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE ID = 23; -- or whatever you need

see this Fiddle.

Answer 3

Although the answer I originally marked as chosen is correct and achieves what I asked there is a better way of doing this (which others acknowledged but didn't go into). A composite unique index should be created on the table consisting of fund_id and date.

ALTER TABLE funds ADD UNIQUE KEY `fund_date` (`fund_id`, `date`);

Then when inserting a record add the condition when a conflict is encountered:

INSERT INTO funds (`fund_id`, `date`, `price`)
    VALUES (23, DATE('2013-02-12'), 22.5)
        ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE `price` = `price`; --this keeps the price what it was (no change to the table) or:

INSERT INTO funds (`fund_id`, `date`, `price`)
    VALUES (23, DATE('2013-02-12'), 22.5)
        ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE `price` = 22.5; --this updates the price to the new value

This will provide much better performance to a sub-query and the structure of the table is superior. It comes with the caveat that you can't have NULL values in your unique key columns as they are still treated as values by MySQL.