Adding a 'check username' to registration form PHP - php

Question

Please could someone give me some much needed direction...
I have a registration form, however I need to add a condition that if the username is already in the table, then a message will appear. I have a had a few goes except it just keeps adding to the SQL table.
Any help would be much appreciated. Here is my current code:
Thanks in advance!
<?php
session_start();session_destroy();
session_start();
$regname = $_GET['regname'];
$passord = $_GET['password'];
if($_GET["regname"] && $_GET["regemail"] && $_GET["regpass1"] && $_GET["regpass2"] )
{
if($_GET["regpass1"]==$_GET["regpass2"])
{
$host="localhost";
$username="xxx";
$password="xxx";
$conn= mysql_connect($host,$username,$password)or die(mysql_error());
mysql_select_db("xxx",$conn);
$sql="insert into users (name,email,password) values('$_GET[regname]','$_GET[regemail]','$_GET[regpass1]')";
$result=mysql_query($sql,$conn) or die(mysql_error());
print "<h1>you have registered sucessfully</h1>";
print "<a href='login_index.php'>go to login page</a>";
}
else print "passwords don't match";
}
else print"invaild input data";
?>

Answer 1

User kingkero offered a good approach. You could modify your table so that the username field is UNIQUE and therefore the table cannot contain rows with duplicate usernames.
However, if you cannot modify the table or for other reasons want to choose a different approach, you can first try to run a select on the table, check the results and act accordingly:
$result=mysql_query('SELECT name FROM users WHERE name="'.$_GET['regname'].'"');
$row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
You can then check $row if it contains the username:
if($row['name']==$_GET['regname'])
If this statement returns true, then you can show the user a message and tell him to pick a different username.
Please note
Using variables that come directly from the client (or browser) such as what might be stored in $_GET['regname'] and using them to build your SQL statement is considered unsafe (see the Wikipedia article on SQL-Injections).
You can use
$regname=mysql_escape_string($_GET['regname'])
to make sure that its safe.

Answer 2

Firstly, there is some chaos on the second line:
session_start();session_destroy();
session_start();
Why you doing it? Just one session_start(); needed.
Then you can find users by simple SQL query:
$sql="SELECT * FROM users WHERE name = '$regname'";
$result=mysql_query($sql) or die(mysql_error());
if (mysql_num_rows($result) > 0) {
//...echo your message here
}
When you got it, I suggest you to rewrite your code with use of PDO and param data binding, in order to prevent SQL injections and using of obsolete functions.