Inserting data and binding values

In SQL, we store data using two statements (usually): INSERT INTO and UPDATE. The first is used when you're adding data to a table, and the second is used to update data that already exists. There's also a variant that permits the merging of data: data that doesn't exist is added, and data that does exist is updated. Various SQL database servers do this differently, but SQLite uses INSERT OR REPLACE INTO.

Note

The snippets in this section are located at snippets/08/ex4-insert-data/ in the code package of this book. When using the interactive snippet playground, select 8: Web SQL Database and Example 4.

The INSERT INTO statement looks as follows:

INSERT [OR REPLACE] INTO tableName (
    fieldName [, ...]
    ) VALUES (
    values [, ...]
    )

The UPDATE statement looks as follows:

UPDATE tableName
  SET fieldName = value
WHERE condition

In many ways, the UPDATE statement is a lot more readable than the INSERT INTO statement, mainly because with the latter, you...