What are the best practices for handling primary keys and auto-incrementing values in MySQL databases when using PHP?

When handling primary keys and auto-incrementing values in MySQL databases using PHP, it is important to properly set up the primary key column with the AUTO_INCREMENT attribute in the database table. This ensures that each new record inserted into the table will automatically generate a unique primary key value. When inserting data into the table using PHP, you should exclude the primary key column from the INSERT query to allow MySQL to assign the next auto-increment value.

// Connect to the database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// Insert data into table excluding the primary key column
$sql = "INSERT INTO table_name (column1, column2) VALUES ('value1', 'value2')";

if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
    echo "New record created successfully";
} else {
    echo "Error: " . $sql . "<br>" . $conn->error;
}

// Close connection
$conn->close();