What are the potential pitfalls of using auto-increment IDs in multiple tables for a multi-page form in PHP?

Potential pitfalls of using auto-increment IDs in multiple tables for a multi-page form in PHP include the risk of duplicate IDs being generated if multiple users are submitting forms simultaneously, leading to data integrity issues. To solve this problem, you can use a unique identifier for each form submission, such as a UUID, to ensure that each record in the database is uniquely identified. 

// Generate a unique identifier for the form submission
$unique_id = uniqid();

// Insert form data into the database using the unique identifier
$query = "INSERT INTO table_name (unique_id, field1, field2) VALUES ('$unique_id', '$field1_value', '$field2_value')";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

// Use the unique identifier to link data across multiple tables if needed
$query2 = "INSERT INTO another_table (unique_id, field3) VALUES ('$unique_id', '$field3_value')";
$result2 = mysqli_query($connection, $query2);

Keywords

auto-increment IDs multiple tables multi-page form PHP pitfalls

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