Last auto generate id

Is there a function to get the last generated MySQL record Id

Basically doing something like this

1. Enter book details

2. Details written to file with a MySQL auto generated key.

Now want to add

1. Borrowers of the book wtih the auto generated key identifiying which book a borrow has gpt their grubby hands on.

We are trying to determine via an online system which genre of books are the most popular with which sections of a school.

Hope that makes some sort of sense.

if you are inserting something and want the ID of the item you just inserted, you can use mysql_insert_id(), like so:

PHP Code:

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mysql_query("INSERT INTO table (field1, field2) VALUES (value1, value2)");
$id = mysql_insert_id(); 


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but, if you just want to get the very last ID in general (and haven't inserted anything), you can just do a regular query and sort it by the ID (descending), and limit it to 1 result.

Code:

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SELECT id FROM table WHERE field=value ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1

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hope that answers your question. the end of your post got me a little confused with what you're trying to do.