CiviCRM Community Forums (archive)

Can anyone tell me in what table the CiviCRM id is stored?  This is the unique numerical ID of the contact, and seems to be called GID in these forums...

I would like to see if I can set this to a higher number so I can start these IDs off at a given number.

oh - and to answer your question 

it is in the table civicrm_contact - field is 'id'

Thanks for that.  I thought there would be a master record with the latest ID number stored in a single row table somewhere.
I have modified my misleading forum items...

Hi,

the contact id (and pretty much all the ids in civi in general) is an auto increment column. It's a mysql feature that when you create a new record, it will automatically fill it with the next available number. On other databases, you have that that next number stored into a SEQUENCE, in mysql it's embedded into the column definition.


In general, you shouldn't make any assumption about what this number is. if you want an id to store external identifiers to sync with another system, use the external_identifier, that's what it's for.


Anyway, to set the value of the id:

ALTER TABLE civicrm_contact AUTO_INCREMENT = 42; //or whatever number

You might want to read mysql doc to check under which condition it's safe (it's close to the metal, so potentially might have bad side effects, eg if you have ids greater to whatever you want to se) and again if you aim is to sync with another database, use the external_identifier.

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