MySQL Disable Foreign Key Checks

Summary: in this tutorial, you will learn how to disable foreign key constraint checks in MySQL.

Sometimes, it is very useful to disable foreign key checks. For example, you can load data to the parent and child tables in any order with the foreign key constraint check disabled.

If you don’t disable foreign key checks, you have to load data into the parent tables first and then the child tables in sequence, which can be tedious.

Another scenario in which you want to disable the foreign key check is when you want to drop a table. Unless you disable the foreign key checks, you cannot drop a table referenced by a foreign key constraint.

To disable foreign key checks, you set the foreign_key_checks variable to zero as follows:

SET foreign_key_checks = 0;Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

To enable the foreign key constraint check, you set the value of the foreign_key_checks to 1:

SET foreign_key_checks = 1;Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Notice that setting foreign_key_checks to 1 does not trigger any validation of the existing table data. In other words, MySQL will not verify the consistency of the data that was added during the foreign key check disabled.

Disable foreign key check example

First, create a new table named countries:

CREATE TABLE countries(
    country_id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
    country_name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(country_id)
);Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Second, create another table named cities:

CREATE TABLE cities(
    city_id INT AUTO_INCREMENT,
    city_name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
    country_id INT NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY(city_id),
    FOREIGN KEY(country_id) 
		REFERENCES countries(country_id)
);Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

The table cities has a foreign key constraint that references the column country_id of the table countries.

Third, insert a new row into the cities table:

INSERT INTO cities(city_name, country_id)
VALUES('New York',1);Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

MySQL issued the following error:

Error Code: 1452. Cannot add or update a child row: a foreign key constraint fails (`classicmodels`.`cities`, CONSTRAINT `cities_ibfk_1` FOREIGN KEY (`country_id`) REFERENCES `countries` (`country_id`))Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

Fourth, disable foreign key checks:

SET foreign_key_checks = 0;Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Fifth, insert a new row into the cities table:

INSERT INTO cities(city_name, country_id)
VALUES('New York',1);Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

This time the INSERT statement executed successfully due to the foreign key check being disabled.

The following query returns the contents of the table cities:

SELECT * FROM cities;Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Sixth, re-enable foreign key constraint check:

SET foreign_key_checks = 1;Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

When the foreign key checks were re-enabled, MySQL did not re-validate data in the table. However, it won’t allow you to insert or update data that violates the foreign key constraint.

Finally, insert a row into the countries table whose value in the column country_id is 1 to make the data consistent in both tables:

INSERT INTO countries(country_id, country_name)
VALUES(1,'USA');Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Drop tables that have foreign key constraints

Suppose that you want to drop the countries and cities tables.

First, drop the table countries :

DROP TABLE countries;Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

MySQL issued this error:

Error Code: 3730. Cannot drop table 'countries' referenced by a foreign key constraint 'cities_ibfk_1' on table 'cities'.Code language: JavaScript (javascript)

To fix this, you have two options:

• Drop the table cities first and then remove the table countries.
• Disable foreign key checks and drop tables in any sequence.

We’ll demonstrate the second way which disables the foreign key constraint check before dropping the tables.

Second, disable the foreign key check:

SET foreign_key_checks = 0;Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Third, drop both tables countries and cities:

DROP TABLE countries;
DROP TABLE cities;Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Both statements were executed successfully.

Finally, enable the foreign key check:

SET foreign_key_checks = 1;Code language: SQL (Structured Query Language) (sql)

Summary

• Use the SET foreign_key_checks = 0 to disable foreign key checks in MySQL.