How do I tell when a MySQL UPDATE was successful versus actually updated data?
Have a look at mysql_affected_rows()
It should tell you if anything was actually updated as opposed to nothing was successfully updated resulting in a return of true.
php.net says:
mysql_affected_rows()
Returns the number of affected rows on success, and -1 if the last query failed.
You could use the following to achieve your desired results:
if($this->db->affected_rows() >= 0){ }
Then you would use mysql_query:
SQL statements, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, DROP, etc, mysql_query() returns TRUE on success or FALSE on error.
Simple like this:
$result = $this->db->update('table', $data);if($result){ //without error even no row updated} else {}