Mysql – Updating table in trigger after update on the same table

MySQLmysql-error-1442sql

How can I update table's column in a trigger after update on the same table?

Here's the trigger:


CREATE TRIGGER upd_total_votes AFTER UPDATE ON products_score
FOR EACH ROW
    UPDATE
        products_score 
    SET
        products_score.votes_total =
            (SELECT
                 (votes_1 + votes_2 + votes_3 + votes_4 + votes_5)
             FROM
                 products_score
             WHERE
                 id = new.id)

Now when I update the table like


UPDATE products_score SET votes_1 = 5 WHERE id = 0

this doesn't work, as I get the following:

#1442 - Can't update table 'products_score' in stored function/trigger because it is already used by statement which invoked this stored function/trigger.

So how on earth I can get this to work?

Best Answer

If you change your trigger to BEFORE instead of AFTER you could do it like this:

CREATE TRIGGER upd_total_votes BEFORE UPDATE ON products_score 
FOR EACH ROW 
BEGIN
    SET new.votes_total = new.votes_1 + new.votes_2 + new.votes_3 + new.votes_4 + new.votes_5 
END
;

Related Solutions

MySQL Error 1093 – Can’t specify target table for update in FROM clause

Update: This answer covers the general error classification. For a more specific answer about how to best handle the OP's exact query, please see other answers to this question

In MySQL, you can't modify the same table which you use in the SELECT part.
This behaviour is documented at: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.6/en/update.html

Maybe you can just join the table to itself

If the logic is simple enough to re-shape the query, lose the subquery and join the table to itself, employing appropriate selection criteria. This will cause MySQL to see the table as two different things, allowing destructive changes to go ahead.

UPDATE tbl AS a
INNER JOIN tbl AS b ON ....
SET a.col = b.col

Alternatively, try nesting the subquery deeper into a from clause ...

If you absolutely need the subquery, there's a workaround, but it's ugly for several reasons, including performance:

UPDATE tbl SET col = (
  SELECT ... FROM (SELECT.... FROM) AS x);

The nested subquery in the FROM clause creates an implicit temporary table, so it doesn't count as the same table you're updating.

... but watch out for the query optimiser

However, beware that from MySQL 5.7.6 and onward, the optimiser may optimise out the subquery, and still give you the error. Luckily, the optimizer_switch variable can be used to switch off this behaviour; although I couldn't recommend doing this as anything more than a short term fix, or for small one-off tasks.

SET optimizer_switch = 'derived_merge=off';

Thanks to Peter V. Mørch for this advice in the comments.

Example technique was from Baron Schwartz, originally published at Nabble, paraphrased and extended here.

Mysql – concatenate multiple MySQL rows into one field

You can use GROUP_CONCAT:

SELECT person_id,
   GROUP_CONCAT(hobbies SEPARATOR ', ')
FROM peoples_hobbies
GROUP BY person_id;

As Ludwig stated in his comment, you can add the DISTINCT operator to avoid duplicates:

SELECT person_id,
   GROUP_CONCAT(DISTINCT hobbies SEPARATOR ', ')
FROM peoples_hobbies
GROUP BY person_id;

As Jan stated in their comment, you can also sort the values before imploding it using ORDER BY:

SELECT person_id, 
       GROUP_CONCAT(hobbies ORDER BY hobbies ASC SEPARATOR ', ')
FROM peoples_hobbies
GROUP BY person_id;

As Dag stated in his comment, there is a 1024 byte limit on the result. To solve this, run this query before your query:

SET group_concat_max_len = 2048;

Of course, you can change 2048 according to your needs. To calculate and assign the value:

SET group_concat_max_len = CAST(
                     (SELECT SUM(LENGTH(hobbies)) + COUNT(*) * LENGTH(', ')
                           FROM peoples_hobbies
                           GROUP BY person_id) AS UNSIGNED);

Best Answer

Related Solutions

MySQL Error 1093 – Can’t specify target table for update in FROM clause

Mysql – concatenate multiple MySQL rows into one field

Related Topic