How To Easily Set Auto Increment Value In phpMyAdmin

Lets take a look at both the cases.

1) Start auto increment from 1.

While adding a column, simply check the checkbox under “A_I” column. This A_I column stands for auto-increment. Just make sure that for the “Type” column against this entry, select any type that represents a numerical value such as Tinyint, Smallint, Mediumint, Int, Bigint, Double. See the screenshot below to understand it more clearly:

Set Auto Increment To 1 in phpMyAdmin

Once you create the table, just click on the “Structure” tab and check to see if “AUTO_INCREMENT” appears under the “Extra” column against this field. If yes, then congrats! You have successfully implemented case 1.

2) Start auto increment at any value of your choice.

This is simple too. You will just need to do couple of extra steps in addition to case 1. Once you have your table ready, just click on “Operations” tab. Look for “Table Options” fieldset.  In this, you will see “AUTO_INCREMENT” with a textbox against it. Now this is where you need to enter the new value that you desire. So if you want the table’s count to start from 5000 instead of 1, just enter 5000 in this textbox and click on the “Go” button. Here is a screenshot of how it can look:

Set Auto Increment in phpMyAdmin

You can enter any other positive number that you like instead of 5000. If you have done it correctly, you will see a success message saying:

“Your SQL query has been executed successfully”.

IMPORTANT NOTE:

There is one important note to remember. If you ever truncate the table, then the count will be restored to 1 automatically, even if you have allotted it a custom number. In such a case, make sure to repeat the steps mentioned in Case 2 above, should you ever truncate the table.

Simple, isn’t it?

Do you know of any other ways to manually set auto increment value in phpMyAdmin? Feel free to suggest by commenting below.

How To Increase Session Timeout To More Than 1440 Seconds in phpMyAdmin

I am using WAMP server, so the steps listed below show you how to make this change if you are using Wamp Server.

1. Navigate to the folder where phpMyAdmin is installed. Typically, it would be something like: C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin{…version number…}

2. Open config.inc.php. Scroll down to the bottom of the file and just below the ?> tag, add the following line & save:

$cfg['LoginCookieValidity'] = 86400; // In seconds

That’s it! That’s all you need to do in order to increase session timeout time. 86400 seconds equals 24 hours, so you are good to go for one full day at a stretch. If you would like to increase this limit to any other value, then simply use the following formula:

60 * 60 * Number of hours.

So for example, if you would like to increase the session timeout limit to 12 hours, then you would get the value in seconds as:

60 (seconds) * 60 (minutes) * 12 (hours) = 43200 seconds

If you would like to increase session time out to just 5 hours, you can get the number of seconds like so:

60 * 60 * 5 = 18000 seconds

Simply replace the 86400 in the above line of code with the seconds that you receive as a result of the above multiplication and you will be good to go.

ADDITIONAL NOTE:

On some systems such as Debian, it might be mandatory to make a relevant change in your WAMP’s php.ini file. So if the above method does not work, open up the php.ini file of your server and hunt for the variable “session.gc_maxlifetime” and assign it the same value as above. So in my case, as I have increased the value to 86400, I would update the variable in my php.ini file like so:

session.gc_maxlifetime = 86400

Simply update the session.gc_maxlifetime in your php.ini file to any value you desire (note that it should match with the value that you add to config.inc.php file). Once done, make sure that you restart your server and that should do it.

Your Turn!

What do you think of the above way to increase the phpMyAdmin Timeout limit? Did it help fix the issue? Feel free to let us know by commenting below.

How To Upgrade phpMyAdmin In Localhost

Before I actually start off with the steps, let me tell you that I am currently using phpmyadmin3.5.1 and I want to upgrade it to phpmyadmin4.0.4.1 (the latest version as of today).  So you might see references of my version of phpMyAdmin, so you might want to swap it out for your version wherever it occurs. So here we go:

1. Go to http://www.phpmyadmin.net/home_page/downloads.php. Download the latest version & extract to a folder. Make sure that you give out a proper name in smaller case and append it with the version and make sure that all the files are sitting in this folder. So I extracted the files to phpmyadmin4.0.4.1 folder and all my files now reside in this folder and are immediately visible when I open up this folder.

2. Go to the directory in which you have installed wamp in your PC (for example: C:/wamp) and then open up the “apps” folder. So for example, you could find this at: C:/wamp/apps/

Once you access the above path, you will find your current installation of phpMyAdmin. So you may see the path like so: C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1.

Simply copy the newly extracted phpMyAdmin folder to this “apps” folder. So in my case the path for the new phpMyAdmin would like so:  C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1.

3. In your wamp folder, search for a folder that says: “alias”. Then open this folder and open the file called “phpmyadmin.conf”. Alternately, you can open this same file by clicking your wampserver icon in the Windows taskbar, then click Apache->Alias directories->”http://localhost/phpmyadmin/”->Edit alias

4. VERY IMPORTANT: Here you have to find two occurrences of your current installation path of phpMyAdmin and replace the current phpMyAdmin folder name with the folder name of the new phpMyAdmin version. Without these two changes, Wamp would deny you access to phpMyAdmin.

Typically, the first occurrence would be the first line and the second occurrence would be few lines below and will be visible once you scroll down through the visible portion of the file.

So find the line that begins with: Alias /phpmyadmin …(your current phpMyAdmin install path)…

In my example, it would be: Alias /phpmyadmin “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1/” 

I would change the above line to: Alias /phpmyadmin “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1/” 

Next, scroll down below until you see the line that starts with: <Directory “…(your install path)…”>

In my example, it would be:  <Directory “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1/”>

I would change the above line to:  <Directory “C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1/”>

Once both the above changes are done, save the file & exit it.

5. Copy the config.inc.php file from your previous version of phpMyAdmin to your new version. So I copied it from C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin3.5.1/ to C:/wamp/apps/phpmyadmin4.0.4.1/. 

The fresh copy of phpmyadmin4.0.4.1 does not have a default config.inc.php file. Rather it has a config.sample.inc.php that you can rename & modify to suit your requirements (if you are really comfortable with editing the file directly or if you are installing phpMyAdmin for the first time). If upgrading from a previous version, then simply copy the config.inc.php and you are good to go. BTW, this confic.inc.php file that you are copying, contains your username and password that you use to login to phpMyAdmin, so you might want to use this file without fail to make this upgrade process as seamless as possible.

6. Last step, finally! Left click Wamp icon in Windows taskbar and select Restart All services. That’s it!

Visit phpMyAdmin as you would normally do (In my case, the URL is : http://localhost/phpmyadmin/)  and if everything went correctly, you should see the latest version of phpMyAdmin!  Enjoy!

Your Turn!

What do you think of the above way to upgrade phpMyAdmin in Localhost for Wamp Server in Windows? Were you able to upgrade your version of phpMyAdmin successfully? Feel free to share your results and views by commenting below.