How to get the ID of a previously inserted row within a transaction using QSqlQuery

Question

I am trying to get the primary key of an inserted row within a transaction scope, because I do not want to leave the db in a logically inconsistent state.

My problem is I cannot find a way to retrieve the ID value of a previously executed query, which I want to use for the next insert query. Querying the PostgreSQL database while the transaction is in effect shows no results in the non-foreign-key table(the row is not yet committed?). I believe this is due to the transaction's isolation level.

Below is what I'm trying to do with production code, albeit slightly edited and narrowed down to one function for clarity. const int lastInsertId is always 0, which in this context should mean no value was found (technically that toInt() function failed). I tried manually inserting a valid non-foreign-key row, and then calling LASTVAL() which produced the expected result - the ID of the inserted row.

So, what am I doing wrong? What am I missing or misunderstanding here?

void createEntityWithoutForiegnKeyConstraint(const QString &nameOfEntity)
{
  db_.transaction();

  QSqlQuery insertQuery(db_);
  insertQuery.prepare("INSERT INTO \"EntityWithoutForeignKey\" (\"name\") VALUES (:name);");

  insertQuery.bindValue(":name", nameOfEntity);
  execQuery(__LINE__, insertQuery);
  QSqlQuery lastIdQuery("SELECT LASTVAL();", db_); // auto executes
  const int lastInsertId = lastIdQuery.value(0).toInt();

  if (lastInsertId <= 0) // 0 is not a valid ID
    throw exception("Oh noes.");

  createEntityWithForeignKeyConstraint(lastInsertId, someData);

  if (!db_.commit())
    db_.rollback();
}

Answer 1

I realise this is an old question but in Qt 5.10 (and likely earlier) there is a function QSqlQuery::lastInsertId() which can be called after QSqlQuery::exec().

It's quite useful if you are using a database such as SQLite which doesn't support the RETURNING clause on an INSERT statement.

QSqlQuery::lastInsertId() documentation.

Usage is something along the lines of the following:

QSqlQuery q;
q.prepare("INSERT INTO table_name VALUES(:some_column_name)");
q.bindValue(":some_column_name", "FooBar");
q.exec();

qDebug() << "Last ID was:" << q.lastInsertId();