Table of Contents for

MySQL in a Nutshell, 2nd Edition

This function returns the value stored in the row identification column of the most recent row inserted for the current MySQL session, provided the identification number was incremented using AUTO_INCREMENT in MySQL. It works like the LAST_INSERT_ID() function in MySQL. No arguments for this function are necessary with MySQL: if given, their values are ignored, although undef is required at a minimum. Other systems may require other options. This function doesn’t work with MySQL before version 1.45 of DBI. It returns undefined if it cannot retrieve the number (which must be retrieved after the insert, and before another statement in MySQL) or if the driver does not support this function.

Here is an example:

...
my $sth = $dbh->prepare("INSERT INTO books (title, author) 
                         VALUES (?,?)");
$sth->execute($title,$author);

my $book_id = $dbh->last_insert_id(undef,undef,undef,undef,undef);

print "New Book ID: $book_id \n";
$sth->finish();