How to handle inserting duplicate data? #53
Description
relates to #45
We have created a function in the adapter for handling inserting data into the database. This function will create a cid and entry_id(which we are considering renaming to id, see here) based on the data passed in and adds them to the params passed to insert.
This will ensure that the cid and entry_id data is inserted into the database.
As a rule we don't want to insert duplicate data as it is a waste. We will use the cid value generated to check if the value is a duplicate and if so we can "reject" the insert.
This works well with the current set up. However, imagine we have a table user which has one column called username.
If our user is originally called batman but decides to change their name to the dark knight. This will work and we will insert a new row in the database.
Now the user decided that they want to change their name back to batman. If we try to insert this, we will get an error because we will be creating a duplicate cid value (which is obviously not what we want in this case).
How do we want to handle this case?
- Should we create another column in the table that keeps track of the
duplicate_no?
We could have some logic that checks to see if the data that is being inserted is the same as the previous version that was inserted. If it is we "reject" that insert. If not we increment the
duplicate_novalue in the db. If we use this value when creating thecidvalue, it would prevent the duplicatecids from being created. (We can come up with a better name thanduplicate_noI'm sure. This was just an idea of a possible solution)
Please let me know your thoughts and if you have any other ideas about this.