PHP - MySQL display highest ID number

What SQL query would I use to display the newest entry? Details:

id is the primary field. I have开发者_JAVA技巧 other fields but that are not related to when they were added.

ORDER BY SomeColumn DESC
LIMIT 1

or

use the MAX() function

Since you didn't give any details about your table it is hard to answer

SELECT * from yourTable ORDER BY `id` DESC LIMIT 1;

Another (better) way would be to have a "date_added" column (date_added TIMESTAMP DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP) so you could order by that column descending instead. Dates are more reliable than ID-assignment.

not sure if this is what your looking for but I use mysql_insert_id() after inserting a new row

The auto incremented ID columns are not always the latest records inserted, I've remember really painful experience with this behavior. Conditions where specific, it was mysql 4.1.x at the time and there was almost 1 million records, where 1 out of 3 deleted everiday, and others re inserted in the next 24hours. It made a huge mess when I realize ordering them via ID was not ordering them by age....

Since then, I use a specific column for doing age related sorts, and populating these fields with date = NOW() at each row insert. Of course it will work to found the latest record as you want, doing an ORDER BY date DESC LIMIT 0,1on your query

SELECT Primary_Key_Field FROM table ORDER BY Primary_Key_Field DESC LIMIT 1

Replace Primary_Key_Field and table obviously :)