Working with data 9

CocoaMySQL made an ID field for us, but it does not automatically increment by default.

Field Purpose

Field Name

Field Contains

MySQL Field Type

identifier

id

number

int

For our ID field, we must tell MySQL to  auto increment  the column. When we do this,

CocoaMySQL will tell us that auto increment fields need to be indexed; do we want to make

this our primary key? Click the okay button and CocoaMySQL will make an index for us.

We'll talk about indexes later.

If you are using the command line, use the following commands:

alter table albums add column id int unsigned not null auto_increment primary

key;

Import data

We have two sets of sample data. The one we're looking at right now is the albums.txt file.

This file is a tab delimited list of albums, artists, years, and date purchased.

In  CocoaMySQL,  pull  down  the   File   menu,  go  to  the   Import   submenu,  and  choose

 CSV file  . Because different computers have different line endings, and because  different

export options will use different things to separate fields, you need to tell CocoaMySQL that

fields are terminated by tabs ( \t ), that the fields are not enclosed by anything, and that the

first line does not contain field names.

Next, you'll need to choose which items in the file go to which field. One of the first things

you'll notice is that we have an extra field. This data contains what looks to be the format of

the album: if you scroll through the data you can see values of CD, Vinyl, or Cassette. We

aren't keeping track of that data, so choose  Do not import .

Because CocoaMySQL does not let you import the same data into two different fields, you

will need to also use  Do not import  temporarily for one or two of the others.