Create Trigger that updates the same table before (or after ??) the Insert I have just started using triggers and one thing that I would need to do is to create a trigger that updates the same table that's inserting the row.

TABLE:

CREATE TABLE `city` (
  `city_id` smallint(5) unsigned NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
  `city` varchar(50) NOT NULL,
  `country_id` smallint(5) unsigned DEFAULT '0',
  `country` varchar(150) DEFAULT NULL,
  `last_update` timestamp NOT NULL DEFAULT CURRENT_TIMESTAMP ON UPDATE CURRENT_TIMESTAMP,
  PRIMARY KEY (`city_id`),
  KEY `idx_fk_country_id` (`country_id`),
  CONSTRAINT `city_ibfk_1` FOREIGN KEY (`country_id`) REFERENCES `country` (`country_id`) ON UPDATE CASCADE
) ENGINE=InnoDB AUTO_INCREMENT=6009 DEFAULT CHARSET=utf8;


Trigger:

DELIMITER $$
CREATE TRIGGER `populate_country_id` BEFORE INSERT ON `city`
FOR EACH ROW
BEGIN

IF NEW.country_id = 0

THEN
    UPDATE city
    INNER JOIN country B ON city.country = B.country
    SET NEW.country_id = B.country_id;

END IF;

END $$
DELIMITER ;


MySQL is just returning: Can't update table 'city' in stored function/trigger because it is already used by statement which invoked this stored function/trigger.

Is there any way I can make this work?

Thanks everyone!
CREATE TRIGGER `populate_country_id` BEFORE INSERT ON `city`
FOR EACH ROW
SET NEW.country_id = (SELECT CASE WHEN NEW.country_id = 0
                                  THEN country_id 
                                  ELSE NEW.country_id END
                      FROM country 
                      WHERE country = NEW.country 
                      LIMIT 1); -- as a precaution


BEGIN-END and DELIMITER reassign are excess.

PS. If NEW.country value is absent in country table then ... anycase inserted data is wrong.