INSERT … ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE Syntax

If you specify ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE, and a row is inserted that would cause a duplicate value in a UNIQUE index or PRIMARY KEY, an UPDATE of the old row is performed. For example, if column a is declared as UNIQUE and contains the value 1, the following two statements have identical effect:

INSERT INTO table (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3)
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c=c+1;

UPDATE table SET c=c+1 WHERE a=1;

The ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE clause can contain multiple column assignments, separated by commas.

With ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE, the affected-rows value per row is 1 if the row is inserted as a new row, and 2 if an existing row is updated.

INSERT INTO table (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3),(4,5,6)
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c=VALUES(a)+VALUES(b);

That statement is identical to the following two statements:

INSERT INTO table (a,b,c) VALUES (1,2,3)
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c=3;
INSERT INTO table (a,b,c) VALUES (4,5,6)
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE c=9;