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Q&A Is it possible in MySQL to require each row in a table have at least one foreign key record in a join table?

ghost-in-the-zsh‭ provided a direct answer and I will try to offer a more general complementary one. One possible thing to try is a trigger that checks the integrity, but it cannot work for insert...

posted 3y ago by Alexei‭

Answer
#1: Initial revision by user avatar Alexei‭ · 2020-11-10T21:30:31Z (over 3 years ago)
`ghost-in-the-zsh`‭ provided a direct answer and I will try to offer a more general complementary one.

One possible thing to try is a trigger that checks the integrity, but it cannot work for inserts because the order must be something along the lines:

    START TRANSACTION
    INSERT INTO B
    INSERT INTO A
    INSERT INTO AxB
    COMMIT

Since A's records must be checked, a trigger for A would make sense, but it would fire too early. A trigger on AxB would not prevent simple changes in A that do not connect to any B record. 

For more complex validations one way is to ensure then from the application layer since it seems that the data is always changed by it. Integrity is ensured by **the proper use of transactions** and automatic testing.

As a safety net, a job might periodically check this integrity (this technique is used the data volume is big enough to make constraints checking quite expensive).