setting up warning for duplicate entries in MySQL database - php

Question

I have a table with 5 columns. ID, name, surname, company & title.
So what I want to do now is to check for duplicate entries during the submitting process, comparing name and surname combination matches. This should then lead to alerting of the duplicate entry and an option to proceed and save it into the database anyway, or cancel the submitting of the content.
Thanks in advance.

Answer 1

You have this option:
setup a conventional index on "(name, surname)"
before each insert, check if the "(name, surname)" combination already exists
if NOT EXISTS, do the insert normaly [here it is up to you to consider the risk that in this 1ms time sb else might have done the same insert]
if EXISTS AND force mode, add the row anyway
if EXISTS AND NOT force mode, proceed to the client according to your specifications
if the client wants to save anyway, repeat operation in force mode.
Here the alternative if you really think this is worth it, is to insert the row anyway and AFTERWARDS check if there were previous rows. If the client wants to keep the record, leave it, otherwise delete it.
rgds

Answer 2

Well here is what I tried, however didn't figure out the optional selection code mentioned in the question yet.
$query = "INSERT INTO phptablo (Name, Surname, Company, Title) VALUES ('$name', '$surname', '$company', '$title')";
$sql = "SELECT Name AND Surname FROM phptablo WHERE Name = '$name' AND Surname= '$surname'";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
$count = mysql_num_rows($result);
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
echo "$sql" . '<br/><br/>';
echo "$result" . '<br/><br/>';
if ($count==0)
{
if (!mysql_query($query))
{
die('Error: ' . mysql_error());
}
echo "Successful Entry!";
}
else
{
echo "Duplicate Entry found!";
}
I'm QUITE NEW to php & MySQL so can't really make that much use of your much appreciated answers. Any chances to add some code that would give me the option to save it or not?
Where I am at right now, the input isn't saved into the database if a duplicate entry is detected, else it is stored right away. If the code I wrote can't really be altered in a way to save duplicates anyway, I could also use some sort of screen showing the duplicates after saving them, so they can be edited, erased etc.