How can I get the next ID to be generated for a table with AUTO_INCREMENT?

Assuming that auto_id is the name of the column with AUTO_INCREMENT, you can use

SELECT max(auto_id)+1 AS nextid FROM your_table;

I am not sure why you need this. But a better approach would be to run the insert query and then use mysql_insert_id() to get the value of AUTO_INCREMENT column.

Are you talking PHP?

$insert_id = mysql_insert_id();

I'm fairly new to programming but if you are using PHP you can get the value like so:

$next_id = mysql_insert_id();

Good luck!