What is the purpose of knowing the auto_increment ID before inserting a record into a database in PHP?

When inserting a record into a database in PHP with an auto_increment ID field, it can be useful to know the value of the next ID that will be generated. This is especially important if you need to reference this ID in other parts of your code or if you have foreign key constraints that require the ID to be known beforehand. One way to achieve this is by querying the database for the current maximum ID value and then incrementing it by 1 before inserting a new record.

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

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

// Get the current maximum ID value
$sql = "SELECT MAX(id) AS max_id FROM your_table";
$result = $conn->query($sql);
$row = $result->fetch_assoc();
$next_id = $row['max_id'] + 1;

// Insert a new record using the next ID value
$sql = "INSERT INTO your_table (id, column1, column2) VALUES ($next_id, 'value1', 'value2')";
$conn->query($sql);

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