INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE Statement

If you specify an ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE clause and a row to be inserted would cause a duplicate value in a UNIQUE index or PRIMARY KEY, an UPDATE of the old row occurs. For example, if column a is declared as UNIQUE and contains the value 1, the following two statements have similar effect:

INSERT INTO t1 (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3)
  ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c=c+1;

UPDATE t1 SET c=c+1 WHERE a=1;

If column b is also unique, the INSERT is equivalent to this UPDATE statement instead:

UPDATE t1 SET c=c+1 WHERE a=1 OR b=2 LIMIT 1;

If a=1 OR b=2 matches several rows, only one row is updated. In general, you should try to avoid using an ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE clause on tables with multiple unique indexes.

With ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE, the affected-rows value per row is 1 if the row is inserted as a new row, 2 if an existing row is updated, and 0 if an existing row is set to its current values.

If a table contains an AUTO_INCREMENT column and INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE inserts or updates a row, the LAST_INSERT_ID() function returns the AUTO_INCREMENT value.

The ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE clause can contain multiple column assignments, separated by commas.

In assignment value expressions in the ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE clause, you can use the VALUES(col_name) function to refer to column values from the INSERT portion of the INSERT ... ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE statement. In other words, VALUES(col_name) in the ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE clause refers to the value of col_name that would be inserted, had no duplicate-key conflict occurred. This function is especially useful in multiple-row inserts. The VALUES() function is meaningful only in the ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE clause or INSERT statements and returns NULL otherwise. Example:

INSERT INTO t1 (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3),(4,5,6)
  ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c=VALUES(a)+VALUES(b);

That statement is identical to the following two statements:

INSERT INTO t1 (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3)
  ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c=3;
INSERT INTO t1 (a,b,c) VALUES (4,5,6)
  ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c=9;

Important

This usage is deprecated in MySQL 8.0.20, and is subject to removal in a future release of MySQL. Use a row alias, or row and column aliases, instead.

Beginning with MySQL 8.0.19, it is possible to use an alias for the row, with, optionally, one or more of its columns to be inserted, following the VALUES or SET clause, and preceded by the AS keyword. Using the row alias new, the statement shown previously using VALUES() to access the new column values can be written in the form shown here:

INSERT INTO t1 (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3),(4,5,6) AS new
  ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c = new.a+new.b;

If, in addition, you use the column aliases m, n, and p, you can omit the row alias in the assignment clause and write the same statement like this:

INSERT INTO t1 (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3),(4,5,6) AS new(m,n,p)
  ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c = m+n;

When using column aliases in this fashion, you must still use a row alias following the VALUES clause, even if you do not make direct use of it in the assignment clause.