Mysql: How to test an SQL Update statement before running it?

In some cases, running an UPDATE statement in production can save the day. However a borked update can be worse than the initial problem.

Short of using a test database, what are options to tell what an update statement will do before running it?

 Answers

In addition to using a transaction as Imad has said (which should be mandatory anyway) you can also do a sanity check which rows are affected by running a select using the same WHERE clause as the UPDATE.

So if you UPDATE is

UPDATE foo
  SET bar = 42
WHERE col1 = 1
  AND col2 = 'foobar';

The following will show you which rows will be updated:

SELECT *
FROM foo
WHERE col1 = 1
  AND col2 = 'foobar';

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What about Transactions? They have the ROLLBACK-Feature.

@see https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/commit.html

For example:

START TRANSACTION;
SELECT * FROM nicetable WHERE somthing=1;
UPDATE nicetable SET nicefield='VALUE' WHERE somthing=1;
SELECT * FROM nicetable WHERE somthing=1; #check

COMMIT;
# or if you want to reset changes 
ROLLBACK;

SELECT * FROM nicetable WHERE somthing=1; #should be the old value

In general these lines will not be executed as once. In PHP f.e. you would write something like that (perhaps a little bit cleaner, but wanted to answer quick ;-) ):

$MysqlConnection->query('START TRANSACTION;');
$erg = $MysqlConnection->query('UPDATE MyGuests SET lastname='Doe' WHERE id=2;');
if($erg)
    $MysqlConnection->query('COMMIT;');
else
    $MysqlConnection->query('ROLLBACK;');

Another way would be to use MySQL Variables (see https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/user-variables.html and https://.com/a/18499823/1416909 ):

# do some stuff that should be conditionally rollbacked later on

SET @v1 := UPDATE MyGuests SET lastname='Doe' WHERE id=2;
IF(v1 < 1) THEN
    ROLLBACK;
ELSE
    COMMIT;
END IF;

But I would suggest to use the language wrappers available in your favorite programming language.

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Not a direct answer, but I've seen many borked prod data situations that could have been avoided by typing the WHERE clause first! Sometimes a WHERE 1 = 0 can help with putting a working statement together safely too. And looking at an estimated execution plan, which will estimate rows affected, can be useful. Beyond that, in a transaction that you roll back as others have said.

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make a SELECT of it,

like if you got

UPDATE users SET id=0 WHERE name='jan'

convert it to

SELECT * FROM users WHERE name='jan'