If you insert a record into a table that contains an AUTO_INCREMENT column, you can obtain the value stored into that column by calling the mysql_insert_id() function.

You can check from your C applications whether a value was stored in an AUTO_INCREMENT column by executing the following code (which assumes that you've checked that the statement succeeded). It determines whether the query was an INSERT with an AUTO_INCREMENT index:

if ((result = mysql_store_result(&mysql)) == 0 &&
    mysql_field_count(&mysql) == 0 &&
    mysql_insert_id(&mysql) != 0)
{
    used_id = mysql_insert_id(&mysql);
}

For more information, see Section 25.2.3.36, “mysql_insert_id()”.

When a new AUTO_INCREMENT value has been generated, you can also obtain it by executing a SELECT LAST_INSERT_ID() statement with mysql_query() and retrieving the value from the result set returned by the statement.

For LAST_INSERT_ID(), the most recently generated ID is maintained in the server on a per-connection basis. It is not changed by another client. It is not even changed if you update another AUTO_INCREMENT column with a non-magic value (that is, a value that is not NULL and not 0).

If you want to use the ID that was generated for one table and insert it into a second table, you can use SQL statements like this:

INSERT INTO foo (auto,text)
    VALUES(NULL,'text');              # generate ID by inserting NULL
INSERT INTO foo2 (id,text)
    VALUES(LAST_INSERT_ID(),'text');  # use ID in second table

Note that mysql_insert_id() returns the value stored into an AUTO_INCREMENT column, whether that value is automatically generated by storing NULL or 0 or was specified as an explicit value. LAST_INSERT_ID() returns only automatically generated AUTO_INCREMENT values. If you store an explicit value other than NULL or 0, it does not affect the value returned by LAST_INSERT_ID().