PHP MySQL INSERT return value with one query execution

INSERT just returns true or false. to actually return something useful, you will need a SELECT or similar query. there is no result to fetch with INSERT.

From the php documentation:

Return Values For SELECT, SHOW, DESCRIBE, EXPLAIN and other statements returning resultset, mysql_query() returns a resource on success, or FALSE on error.

For other type of SQL statements, INSERT, UPDATE, DELETE, DROP, etc, mysql_query() returns TRUE on success or FALSE on error.

The returned result resource should be passed to mysql_fetch_array(), and other functions for dealing with result tables, to access the returned data.

Use mysql_num_rows() to find out how many rows were returned for a SELECT statement or mysql_affected_rows() to find out how many rows were affected by a DELETE, INSERT, REPLACE, or UPDATE statement.

mysql_query() will also fail and return FALSE if the user does not have permission to access the table(s) referenced by the query.