Can't seem to add multiple columns to my database with phpmyadmin

Question

I'm just playing around with SQL for the first time at the moment and I've been trying to add new columns to an existing table for a student registry sort of deal.

I've followed a few tutorials online and they're all pointing to what I've been trying so far which is basically this:

ALTER TABLE students 
ADD 
allergies VARCHAR(255), 
afterSchoolActivities VARCHAR(255);

Based on the stuff I've read and the tutorials I've watched, it should work, but phpmyadmin displays an error message:

1 errors were found during analysis.

Unrecognized alter operation. (near "" at position 0)

1064 - You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MariaDB server version for the right syntax to use near 'VARCHAR(255)' at line 1

I'm pretty sure there's something here tha I'm missing, but I've been staring at this for a while and cannot seem to figure it out. Thought I'd reach out to this amazing community for help.

P.S: Apologies for the poor code formatting, I've been trying to post this question for nearly an hour indenting and trying everything else, but it just doesn't seem to work. EDIT: Somehow managed to fix it after posting.

Rick Nederpelt · Answer 1 · 2019-03-28T09:31:12.270

0

I'm trying to add both "allergies" and "afterSchoolActivities"

In that case, you can use 2 statements.

ALTER TABLE students
ADD COLUMN allergies VARCHAR(255);

ALTER TABLE students
ADD COLUMN afterSchoolActivites VARCHAR(255);

edited Mar 28 '19 at 09:31

answered Mar 28 '19 at 09:11

Rick Nederpelt

68
6

just to clarify, I'm trying to add both "allergies" and "afterSchoolActivities" to the table rather than trying to add "allergies" AFTER "SchoolActivities" - if that makes sense? I have tried altering the code to: ALTER TABLE students ADD COLUMNS allergies VARCHAR(255), afterSchoolActivities VARCHAR(255); Unfortunately, still no luck. – jollyjwhiskers Mar 28 '19 at 09:18

score 0 · Accepted Answer · answered Mar 28 '19 at 09:26

Right, so after going back and forth for a while, I realized that what was happening was that I wasn't specifying what should happen after the comma. I assumed it was implied after the first ADD, but apparently it is not.

For anyone else who happens to get stuck like I did, what seemed to have fixed the issue was this:

ALTER TABLE students 
ADD allergies VARCHAR(255),
ADD afterSchoolActivities VARCHAR(255);

Can't seem to add multiple columns to my database with phpmyadmin

2 Answers2