check if values already exist inside a row instead of column cells

Yes it is. You can just use multiple where clause like this :

SELECT * FROM `users` WHERE `name` = "john" and `surname` = "smith";

For more complex possibilities, read the select documentation.

SELECT 1 FROM 'MYTABLE' WHERE 'NAME' = 'JHON' AND 'SURNAME' = 'SMITH'

You can check the count of the rows

select count(id) from table

also you can check if the data has been inserted. reference

$result = mysql_query("INSERT INTO PEOPLE (NAME ) VALUES ('COLE')")); if($result) { echo "Success";

} else { echo "Error";

}

please try this. in this query i added lcase in name and check both side so u can find which one inserted in upper and lower latter words.

$qry="SELECT * FROM Table WHERE LCASE(name) = lcase('john') and LCASE(surname) = lcase('smith')";
$run=mysql_query($qry) or die(mysql_error());
if(mysql_num_rows($run)>0)
{
     echo "already registered";
}

You can check with IN clause

SELECT * FROM `MYTABLE` WHERE (`NAME`, `SURNAME`) IN (('jonh', 'smith'));

You can use GROUP_CONCAT to join all cells in a row:

SELECT * FROM TableA
WHERE FIND_IN_SET('john', GROUP_CONCAT(Id, Name , SurName separator ',')) > 0
AND FIND_IN_SET('smith', GROUP_CONCAT(Id, Name , SurName separator ','))  > 0;

This will not care which column appeared the name JOHN and SMITH

By using this code:

$id=$_POST['id'];

$name=$_POST['name'];


$surname=$_POST['surname'];

$result = mysql_query("SELECT id,name,surname FROM tablename WHERE id='".$id."'name='".$name."' and surname='".$surname."'");


$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);


$cnt = mysql_num_rows($result);



if($cnt == 0)
{ 

    enter code here

(Statement);
}
    else
{ 
(Statement);
}

This sounds like you want to insert a record, but want to check if it exists first.

If you don't care if the insert fails or not (ie, you just want to do the insert and know a value has been inserted) then you could set up a unique index on name and surname.

To do the insert you could then just use INSERT IGNORE blah . Thus if there already is that combination of name and surname the INSERT will silently fail:-

INSERT IGNORE INTO sometable(id, name, surname) 
VALUES(NULL, '$name', '$surname') 

If you need to know the id of the record

INSERT IGNORE INTO sometable(id, name, surname) 
VALUES(NULL, '$name', '$surname') 
ON DUPLICATE KEY UPDATE id=LAST_INSERT_ID(id)

This will return the id of the new or existing row (as appropriate) in the normal mysql functions to return the inserted row id.