Unique random number?
 

I have a site for my company that requires a report number. This report number is the id for a specific report, so must be unique. At first I assumed that just a randomly generated number would work, but didn't think the site would get as many reports as it is. So now I need to set it so the random number is unique. How can I do this? My first thought is to query the db to see if the number exist then somehow get a new number if it does exist, but that seems like the wrong way to me. Can someone help me?

Put the id on auto_increment, then it'd be a larger and larger number. So it'll always be unique.

The number also has to be displayed on the screen for the user.

After insert, just fetch the number and display it then!

@code_junkie

A tip would be

mysql_insert_id():

http://se2.php.net/manual/en/functio...-insert-id.php

:)