MySQL Trigger - Storing a SELECT in a variable

Question

I have a trigger in which I want to have a variable that holds an INT I get from a SELECT, so I can use it in two IF statements instead of calling the SELECT twice. How do you declare/use variables in MySQL triggers?

Answer 1

You can declare local variables in MySQL triggers, with the DECLARE syntax.

Here's an example:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS foo;
CREATE TABLE FOO (
  i SERIAL PRIMARY KEY
);

DELIMITER //
DROP TRIGGER IF EXISTS bar //

CREATE TRIGGER bar AFTER INSERT ON foo
FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
  DECLARE x INT;
  SET x = NEW.i;
  SET @a = x; -- set user variable outside trigger
END//

DELIMITER ;

SET @a = 0;

SELECT @a; -- returns 0

INSERT INTO foo () VALUES ();

SELECT @a; -- returns 1, the value it got during the trigger

When you assign a value to a variable, you must ensure that the query returns only a single value, not a set of rows or a set of columns. For instance, if your query returns a single value in practice, it's okay but as soon as it returns more than one row, you get "ERROR 1242: Subquery returns more than 1 row".

You can use LIMIT or MAX() to make sure that the local variable is set to a single value.

CREATE TRIGGER bar AFTER INSERT ON foo
FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
  DECLARE x INT;
  SET x = (SELECT age FROM users WHERE name = 'Bill'); 
  -- ERROR 1242 if more than one row with 'Bill'
END//

CREATE TRIGGER bar AFTER INSERT ON foo
FOR EACH ROW BEGIN
  DECLARE x INT;
  SET x = (SELECT MAX(age) FROM users WHERE name = 'Bill');
  -- OK even when more than one row with 'Bill'
END//