Populating multiple tables when creating new primary record - php

Question

I have been working on my first webapp and I hit a bit of a wall. I have a table in my db set up as follows:
student_id(student_id, first_name, last_name, bdate, etc...)
I also have several tables for classes set up similarly to this
class_table(id, student_id, quiz_1, quiz_2, etc....)
student_id is how I would like to track everything, from my understanding, this would be a primary key that would become a foreign key on the class tables.
What I would like to do is create an entry for the student on each class table when the php script I am writing creates a new student. This is what my query looks like:
$query = "INSERT INTO student_id(0, '$first_name', '$last_name'.... etc);".
"INSERT INTO class_table(0, LAST_INSERT_ID(), '$quiz_1', $quiz_2'...etc)";
Is this the right way to do this? I keep getting an error from my mysqli_query... so I am guessing this is where the problem is. How would I achieve this?

Answer 1

mysqli_query() (and mysql_query()) will only execute a single query. You would need to perform two calls to mysqli_query() or use mysqli_multi_query(), which will execute multiple queries in one call.

Answer 2

You're missing the VALUES clause:
$query = "INSERT INTO student_id VALUES (0, '$first_name', '$last_name'.... etc);".
"INSERT INTO class_table VALUES (0, LAST_INSERT_ID(), '$quiz_1', '$quiz_2'...etc)";
and you will need to use the mysqli_multi_query() function. See the example at http://www.php.net/manual/en/mysqli.multi-query.php#106126:
if ($mysqli->multi_query($query)) {
$i = 0;
do {
$i++;
} while ($mysqli->next_result());
}
if ($mysqli->errno) {
echo "Batch execution prematurely ended on statement $i.\n";
var_dump($statements[$i], $mysqli->error);
}
You could also create a stored procedure, and call it with all the needed parameters:
CALL insert_student('$first_name', '$last_name', '$quiz_1', $quiz_2', ... etc);
Here's an example:
CREATE PROCEDURE add_student(
IN v_first_name VARCHAR(50),
IN v_last_name VARCHAR(50),
IN v_quiz_1 VARCHAR(255),
IN v_quiz_2 VARCHAR(255)
)
DETERMINISTIC
MODIFIES SQL DATA
proc: BEGIN
START TRANSACTION;
INSERT INTO student_id VALUES (0, v_first_name, v_last_name);
IF ROW_COUNT() <= 0 THEN
ROLLBACK;
SELECT 0 AS result;
LEAVE proc;
END IF;
INSERT INTO class_table VALUES (0, LAST_INSERT_ID(), v_quiz_1, v_quiz_2);
COMMIT;
SELECT 1 AS result;
END;