How to manage duplicate sql values that has to be unique? - sql

Question

Users of my site can submit post title and post content by form. The post title will be saved and converted to SEO friendly mode (eg: "title 12 $" -> "title-12"). this will be this post's url.
My question is if a user entered a title that is identical to previous entered title, the url's of those posts will be identical. So can be the new title be modified automatically by appending a number to the end of the title?
eg:
"title-new" -> "title-new-1" or if "title-new-1" present in db
convert it to "title-new-2"
I'm sorry I'm new to this, maybe it's very easy, Thanks for your help.
I'm using PDO.

Answer 1

when saving the post title you can query the db if it exists? If it exists the simply append a number and again query, if it again exists increment it by one and hence.

Answer 2

Do a select on your database for that title, and use rowCount() to check how many results you have. If the result is 0: you can add it, if the result is n, you add n to the title.
To append use something like this (not correct):
$count = $del->rowCount(); //Assuming this returns 1
if($count){
$title = $title . "-" . $count;
}
This will give you "theduplicatetitle-1"

Answer 3

thank you #Ratna & #Borniet for your answers. i'm posting explained code to any other user who want's it. if there is somrthing should be added or removed or better way please let me know.
//first i'm going to search the "new unchanged title name" whether it's present in db.
$newtitle= "tst-title";
$dbh = new PDO("mysql:host=localhost;dbname='dbname', 'usrname', 'password');
$stmt = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM `tablename` WHERE `col.name` = ? LIMIT 1");
$stmt->execute(array($newtitle));
if ( $stmt->rowCount() < 1 ) {
// enter sql command to insert data
}
else {
$i='0';
do{
$i++;
$stmt = $dbh->prepare("SELECT * FROM `tablename` WHERE `url` = ? LIMIT 1");
$stmt->execute(array($newtitle.'-'.$i));
}
while($stmt->rowCount()>0);
// enter sql command to insert data
}
that's it. the reason i'm dividing in to two is because i want to add '-' to the url instead of just number.