How to give a unique number to add new product on website

Question

I am creating a ecommerce website, there i want to give a unique number to the product while adding. I want to do it in a way that it will automatically takes the number for this right now i m using time() function. with this a product get the time value while adding. But i dont know that with time function every time it will give a unique number or it can be repeat also if any body added product in a same time.

if any body have any other suggestion to give unique number or id to it pls tell me.

a reply will be appreciated.

Answer 1

Using time() as mentioned will give you a sortable way to create unique IDs. Concatenating strings will also further randomize your desired result and still keep it sortable:

$uniqueId= time().mt_rand();

Answer 2

Don't bother using time() to uniquely name your products. Just use an MySQL auto_increment column and then if you need to retrieve the new ID from the database use PHP's mysql_insert_id() function (or the equivalent for whatever database interface you're using).

Answer 3

create a table with the following schema

create table products
(
  id int auto_increment primary key,
  product nvarchar(40),
  type nvarchar(10),
  time timestamp default now(),
  ...
);

to insert data into the table use

insert into products(product,type) 
values ('JEdit','Editor'),('BlueFish','Compiler');

Your table would look like this

id     product      type       time                 ...
_____________________________________________________
1      JEdit        Editor     2012-4-11 10:00:00  
2      BlueFish     Compiler   2012-4-11 11:00:00