INSERT with ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE Instead of REPLACE

If the MySQL-specific option ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE is specified, and a row is inserted that would cause a duplicate value in a UNIQUE index or PRIMARY KEY, an UPDATE of the old row is performed. ON DUPLICATE KEY is like REPLACE but “nicer” in some situations because it doesn't throw out the original row. For example, if a column is declared as UNIQUE and contains the value 1, the following two statements have identical effect:

INSERT INTO table (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c=c+1;

UPDATE table SET c=c+1 WHERE a=1;

The rows-affected value is 1 if the row is inserted as a new record and 2 if an existing record is updated.If column b is also unique, the INSERT is equivalent to this UPDATE statement instead:

UPDATE table SET c=c+1 WHERE a=1 OR b=2 LIMIT 1;

If a=1 OR b=2 matches several rows, only one row is updated. In general, avoid using an ON

DUPLICATE KEY clause on tables with multiple unique indexes.

From the previous example in the INSERT section, suppose that id is the AUTO_INCREMENT column.To make LAST_INSERT_ID() meaningful for updates, insert rows as follows:

INSERT INTO table (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3) ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE id=LAST_INSERT_ID(id), c=3;