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runnuger

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MySQL Delete

Hi EE,

I am trying to delete a record from a MySQL parent table that has five foreign keys using workbench.  When I use the statement DELETE FROM table WHERE id = 24 I get this error - Error Code: 1451
Cannot delete or update a parent row: a foreign key constraint fails.  I am hoping that the delete from the parent table will remove the child table records as well. Any insights?

Thanks Runnuger
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mmr159

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Avatar of Farzad Akbarnejad
Hello,
Delete on child rows will be happened if you define cascade reference option in your FOREIGN KEY Constraints. This URL may be helped you.

http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/innodb-foreign-key-constraints.html

-FA
Hi,

You can use cascade delete for this.  Check out: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/innodb-foreign-key-constraints.html

Hope this helps,

John
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supersepp

you probably forgot to set your foreign key to ON DELETE CASCADE

you can fix that by using: ALTER TABLE referencingtable DROP FOREIGN KEY fk_symbol;

and then ALTER TABLE referencingtable
    ADD FOREIGN KEY idx_fk (idxcolname)
    REFERENCES table (idxcolname)
    ON DELETE CASCADE;

or you simply delete all rows from the other tables before deleting from the parent.
to delete the records from the child table eaither you have to delete the same from parent table or desable the foreignkey constraint.  the automatic delete is depend on the enforced refrential integrity