MakeAList

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Make a List

This tutorial shows you a quick way to make a MySQL table using a text editor and Entrance.

Open a text editor, like TextEdit or Notepad, and type in a few lines of text:

apple

   pear

   plum

   cherry

Then select the lines and copy them to the clipboard. (You can use Command-A Command-C on the Mac, Ctrl-A Ctrl-C on Windows or Linux to select all and copy)

Now open Entrance, go to the Edit menu, and select “Paste data from clipboard...”. You will see a dialog like this one:

Select "Simple List" for the data type, then fill in a name for the new table, say “Fruit”, and click OK. Congratulations, you have created a table in a database.

Next, you might want to change the name of the only column in Fruit from “COL0” to something more descriptive. Here’s how to do that: Open the column popup menu (Ctrl-Click on column ‘COL0’ on the Mac, right click on Windows) and select “Rename Column...”. Enter a new name, something like "Name" will do, and click Ok.

Add to the list

Now type a few more lines in your editor:

  lemon

  orange

  grapefruit

Select these three lines and copy them to the clipboard. Use Entrance to paste them as before.

Notice that when the dialog opens this time, the table name "Fruit" is already filled in and "Append rows to existing table" is already selected (because these values are automatically filled in when you have a table tab open). Click OK, and the new lines will appear in your table.

Query the list

There is a quick way to start writing a SQL query on a table. Open its popup menu from the explorer tree (Right-click or Command-click) and then click "SQL to select *". This will create a query and open it. Now you can run the query or edit it to do other things. For example, try adding a "where clause", like the one in bold below:

  use test;

  select * from fruit

where Name like 'p%';

and then click the Run tool to see what it does. (Answer: This query selects names beginning with 'p'. The character '%' is a wildcard)

There are more details about writing SQL SELECT queries with WHERE clauses bookmarked under the Help menu. Click "SELECT Syntax" in the Help menu to learn more.

Creating a list with more than one column

You can make tables with two or more columns by separating values on a line with tabs. For example, this text will make a table with two columns:

   1(tab)George Washington

   2(tab)John Adams

   3(tab)Thomas Jefferson

   4(tab)James Madison

Creating a list with given column names

You can also specify column names. For example, try pasting this data with the "first line contains column names" checkbox checked:

   Which(tab)Name

   1(tab)George Washington

   2(tab)John Adams

   3(tab)Thomas Jefferson

   4(tab)James Madison

Avoid sorting problems

The tables you create this way will all have column types appropriate for storing strings up to 255 characters long. These column types work just fine for simple things like address books and mailing lists. Arithmetic operations and functions like sum() and max() will work, too.

However, if you are working with numbers, you will want to change their column type from text to a number type, so that they sort correctly. Here's how to do that. Open the column popup in the table window and select "Change column type...":

Then select "integer" or another of the number types. Now you can bring up the column popup again, and this time select a sorting option. Rows will sort correctly.

Getting back to SQL

Most operations in Entrance are designed to make it easy to get "back" to the SQL script underlying them, so that a MySQL developer can do fine tuning if it is needed. To get a MySQL create table script matching the tables you create using these techniques, go to the Entrance explorer tree, open the popup on the corresponding table node, and select "SQL to create table".

Please note: This web page and other Entrance documentation web pages are copyrighted material and have not been released under the terms of the GPL.

MySQL is a registered trademark of MySQL AB in the United States, the European Union and other countries. Windows is a trademark of Microsoft Corporation. Macintosh is a trademark of Apple Computer, Inc.