A way to get the next insert ID if you are certain there won't be any conflicts (other insertions during processing) from MySQL. Source: http://stackoverflow.com/a/12500309/155421

mysql_increment.txt

SELECT AUTO_INCREMENT
FROM information_schema.tables
WHERE table_name = 'table_name'
AND table_schema = DATABASE( ) ;


--- or ---


$result = mysql_query("SHOW TABLE STATUS LIKE 'table_name'");
$row = mysql_fetch_array($result);
$nextId = $row['Auto_increment'];