How do I insert a value in MySQL that consist of single or double quotes. i.e
This is Ashok's Pen.
The single quote will create problems. There might be other escape characters.
How do you insert the data properly?
Put quite simply:
SELECT 'This is Ashok''s Pen.';
So inside the string, replace each single quote with two of them.
Or:
SELECT 'This is Ashok's Pen.'
Escape it =)
' is the escape character. So your string should be:
This is Ashok''s Pen
If you are using some front-end code, you need to do a string replace before sending the data to the stored procedure.
For example, in C# you can do
value = value.Replace("'", "''");
and then pass value to the stored procedure.
See my answer to "How to escape characters in MySQL"
Whatever library you are using to talk to MySQL will have an escaping function built in, e.g. in PHP you could use mysqli_real_escape_string or PDO::quote
If you use prepared statements, the driver will handle any escaping. For example (Java):
Connection conn = DriverManager.getConnection(driverUrl);
conn.setAutoCommit(false);
PreparedStatement prepped = conn.prepareStatement("INSERT INTO tbl(fileinfo) VALUES(?)");
String line = null;
while ((line = br.readLine()) != null) {
prepped.setString(1, line);
prepped.executeQuery();
}
conn.commit();
conn.close();
Use this code:
<?php
$var = "This is Ashok's Pen.";
mysql_real_escape_string($var);
?>
This will solve your problem, because the database can't detect the special characters of a string.
There is another way to do this which may or may not be safer, depending upon your perspective. It requires MySQL 5.6 or later because of the use of a specific string function: FROM_BASE64
.
Let's say you have this message you'd like to insert:
"Ah," Nearly Headless Nick waved an elegant hand, "a matter of no importance. . . . It's not as though I really wanted to join. . . . Thought I'd apply, but apparently I 'don't fulfill requirements' -"
That quote has a bunch of single- and double-quotes and would be a real pain to insert into MySQL. If you are inserting that from a program, it's easy to escape the quotes, etc. But, if you have to put that into a SQL script, you'll have to edit the text (to escape the quotes) which could be error prone or sensitive to word-wrapping, etc.
Instead, you can Base64-encode the text, so you have a "clean" string:
SWtGb0xDSWdUbVZoY214NUlFaGxZV1JzWlhOeklFNXBZMnNnZD JGMlpXUWdZVzRnWld4bFoyRnVkQ0JvWVc1a0xDQWlZU0J0WVhS MFpYCklnYjJZZ2JtOGdhVzF3YjNKMFlXNWpaUzRnTGlBdUlDNG dTWFFuY3lCdWIzUWdZWE1nZEdodmRXZG9JRWtnY21WaGJHeDVJ SGRoYm5SbApaQ0IwYnlCcWIybHVMaUF1SUM0Z0xpQlVhRzkxWj JoMElFa25aQ0JoY0hCc2VTd2dZblYwSUdGd2NHRnlaVzUwYkhr Z1NTQW5aRzl1SjMKUWdablZzWm1sc2JDQnlaWEYxYVhKbGJXVn VkSE1uSUMwaUlBPT0K
Some notes about Base64-encoding:
base64
and MySQL agree on what the character encoding is (I recommend UTF-8).Now, to load this into MySQL:
INSERT INTO my_table (text) VALUES (FROM_BASE64(' SWtGb0xDSWdUbVZoY214NUlFaGxZV1JzWlhOeklFNXBZMnNnZD JGMlpXUWdZVzRnWld4bFoyRnVkQ0JvWVc1a0xDQWlZU0J0WVhS MFpYCklnYjJZZ2JtOGdhVzF3YjNKMFlXNWpaUzRnTGlBdUlDNG dTWFFuY3lCdWIzUWdZWE1nZEdodmRXZG9JRWtnY21WaGJHeDVJ SGRoYm5SbApaQ0IwYnlCcWIybHVMaUF1SUM0Z0xpQlVhRzkxWj JoMElFa25aQ0JoY0hCc2VTd2dZblYwSUdGd2NHRnlaVzUwYkhr Z1NTQW5aRzl1SjMKUWdablZzWm1sc2JDQnlaWEYxYVhKbGJXVn VkSE1uSUMwaUlBPT0K '));
This will insert without any complaints, and you didn't have to manually-escape any text inside the string.
You should escape the special characters using the character.
This is Ashok's Pen.
Becomes:
This is Ashok's Pen.
You can use this code,
<?php
$var = "This is Ashok's Pen.";
addslashes($var);
?>
if mysqli_real_escape_string() does not work.
In PHP, use mysqli_real_escape_string.
Example from the PHP Manual:
<?php
$link = mysqli_connect("localhost", "my_user", "my_password", "world");
/* check connection */
if (mysqli_connect_errno()) {
printf("Connect failed: %s
", mysqli_connect_error());
exit();
}
mysqli_query($link, "CREATE TEMPORARY TABLE myCity LIKE City");
$city = "'s Hertogenbosch";
/* this query will fail, cause we didn't escape $city */
if (!mysqli_query($link, "INSERT into myCity (Name) VALUES ('$city')")) {
printf("Error: %s
", mysqli_sqlstate($link));
}
$city = mysqli_real_escape_string($link, $city);
/* this query with escaped $city will work */
if (mysqli_query($link, "INSERT into myCity (Name) VALUES ('$city')")) {
printf("%d Row inserted.
", mysqli_affected_rows($link));
}
mysqli_close($link);
?>
If you want to keep (')
apostrophe in the database use this below code:
$new_value = str_replace("'","'", $value);
$new_value
can store in database.
$var = mysqli_real_escape_string($conn, $_POST['varfield']);
For programmatic access, you can use placeholders to automatically escape unsafe characters for you.
In Perl DBI, for example, you can use:
my $string = "This is Ashok's pen";
$dbh->do("insert into my_table(my_string) values(?)",undef,($string));
Use either addslahes() or mysql_real_escape_string().
The way I do, by using Delphi:
TheString to "escape":
TheString=" bla bla bla 'em some more apo:S 'em and so on ";
Solution:
StringReplace(TheString, #39,''+#39, [rfReplaceAll, rfIgnoreCase]);
Result:
TheString=" bla bla bla 'em some more apo:S 'em and so on ";
This function will replace all Char(39) with "'" allowing you to insert or update text fields in MySQL without any problem.
Similar functions are found in all programming languages!
Maybe you could take a look at function QUOTE
in the MySQL manual.