How do you make a field always default to a value in mySQL?

I have a text field (column).

Every time I create a reco开发者_开发问答rd I want this particular column, called "type", to default to "FC" for every new record.

I can't get it to work.

Try this after your create table statement:

ALTER TABLE TableName MODIFY type columnType Default 'FC';

That way, every time you insert a new row, type will have the value 'FC' unless otherwise specified.

Is your query inserting that column as a blank value? if so, that is probably the problem.

The only sollution I can think of is a trigger

A quick untested example from the manual and from the top of my head:

  CREATE TRIGGER ins_yourtable AFTER INSERT ON yourtable
->FOR EACH ROW SET type = 'FC';

If you can control all inserts you can also just skip the column while inserting: they you'll get the default value. But when the value is filled with someting (even '') it will get that value, so you're not forcing it.