I have a table (wp_postmeta), which contains four columns (meta_id, post_id, meta_key, meta_value). meta_key contains a field called neighborhood_value and the values for neighborhood_value are stored under the meta_value column. How do I retrieve the contents of neighborhood_value from my table and use them as a variable? Any support is appreciated
Ok, as everything is meta, thecode will also be "meta" :)
UPDATE - now when I know what you use to connect to DB I can change my answer to be more specific.
global $wpdb;
$sql = "SELECT meta_key, meta_value FROM $wpdb->postmeta WHERE post_id=XXX";
$retMeta = array();
$results = $wpdb->get_results($sql);
foreach ($results as $resultRow)
{
if (!isset($retMeta[$resultRow['meta_key']]))
{
$retMeta[$resultRow['meta_key']] = array();
}
$retMeta[$resultRow['meta_key']][] = $resultRow['meta_value'];
}
The resulting $retMeta will be two dimensional array, and then you will be able to access your neighbourhood value by using $retMeta['neighbourhood_value'][0] (of course first you have to check if this is set - isset($retMeta['neighbourhood_value'])).
UPDATE2
For script imporing data, it'll look like that:
$sql = "SELECT meta_key, meta_value FROM wp_postmeta WHERE post_id=XXX";
$retMeta = array();
$result = mysql_query($sql);
while ($resultRow= mysql_fetch_assoc($result))
{
if (!isset($retMeta[$resultRow['meta_key']]))
{
$retMeta[$resultRow['meta_key']] = array();
}
$retMeta[$resultRow['meta_key']][] = $resultRow['meta_value'];
}
mysql_free_result($result);
But you should use WP_Query anyway, to maintain portability (the wp_postmeta doesn't have to be named that way, it can be wp2_postmeta etc).
If I understand correctly, you want to key a list of keys from meta_value?
I would do this in php: (assuming you are using some sort of framework that supports this construct. This example works with the codeigniter framework))
$sql = "SELECT distinct meta_value FROM wp_postmeta"
$result = $db->query($sql)
foreach ($result->reult() as $row) {
$mydata[] = $row->meta_value;
}
$mydata is now array containing all of your meta_value values.
I was doing same as the following.
<?php foreach($values as $value)
{
$myVarname[$value[valuefield]]=$value[valuefield];
}
$myVarname[field1]="Cow";
$myVarname[field2]="dog";
?>
If you're working with Wordpress template files such as loop.php etc., just use the handy get_post_meta() function.
You don't specify what language you want to use for your variables - but if it happens to be SQL in MySQL, here's how you "Retrieve Value From MySQL Table and Save in Variable":
select #var_name := column_name from table_name where other_column = 5;
This does the select, and as a side-effect assigns the value of the user variable #var_name to the value of column_name.
or
select #var_name := count(*) from other_table where other_column > 5;
which sets #var_name to the number of records that matched the condition.
Related
I'd like to get all of a mysql table's col names into an array in php?
Is there a query for this?
The best way is to use the INFORMATION_SCHEMA metadata virtual database. Specifically the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS table...
SELECT `COLUMN_NAME`
FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS`
WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='yourdatabasename'
AND `TABLE_NAME`='yourtablename';
It's VERY powerful, and can give you TONS of information without need to parse text (Such as column type, whether the column is nullable, max column size, character set, etc)...
Oh, and it's standard SQL (Whereas SHOW ... is a MySQL specific extension)...
For more information about the difference between SHOW... and using the INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables, check out the MySQL Documentation on INFORMATION_SCHEMA in general...
You can use the following query for MYSQL:
SHOW `columns` FROM `your-table`;
Below is the example code which shows How to implement above syntax in php to list the names of columns:
$sql = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM your-table";
$result = mysqli_query($conn,$sql);
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)){
echo $row['Field']."<br>";
}
For Details about output of SHOW COLUMNS FROM TABLE visit: MySQL Refrence.
Seems there are 2 ways:
DESCRIBE `tablename`
or
SHOW COLUMNS FROM `tablename`
More on DESCRIBE here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/describe.html
I have done this in the past.
SELECT column_name
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_name='insert table name here';
Edit: Today I learned the better way of doing this. Please see ircmaxell's answer.
Parse the output of SHOW COLUMNS FROM table;
Here's more about it here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/show-columns.html
Use mysql_fetch_field() to view all column data. See manual.
$query = 'select * from myfield';
$result = mysql_query($query);
$i = 0;
while ($i < mysql_num_fields($result))
{
$fld = mysql_fetch_field($result, $i);
$myarray[]=$fld->name;
$i = $i + 1;
}
"Warning
This extension is deprecated as of PHP 5.5.0, and will be removed in the future."
The simplest solution out of all Answers:
DESC `table name`
or
DESCRIBE `table name`
or
SHOW COLUMNS FROM `table name`
An old PHP function "mysql_list_fields()" is deprecated. So, today the best way to get names of fields is a query "SHOW COLUMNS FROM table_name [LIKE 'name']". So, here is a little example:
$fields = array();
$res=mysql_query("SHOW COLUMNS FROM mytable");
while ($x = mysql_fetch_assoc($res)){
$fields[] = $x['Field'];
}
foreach ($fields as $f) { echo "<br>Field name: ".$f; }
when you want to check your all table structure with some filed then use this code. In this query i select column_name,column_type and table_name for more details . I use order by column_type so i can see it easily.
SELECT `COLUMN_NAME`,COLUMN_TYPE,TABLE_NAME
FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS`
WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='yourdatabasename' order by DATA_TYPE;
If you want to check only double type filed then you can do it easily
SELECT `COLUMN_NAME`,COLUMN_TYPE,TABLE_NAME,DATA_TYPE
FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS`
WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='yourdatabasename' AND DATA_TYPE like '%bigint%' order by DATA_TYPE;
if you want to check which field allow null type etc then you can use this
SELECT `COLUMN_NAME`,COLUMN_TYPE,TABLE_NAME,IS_NULLABLE,DATA_TYPE
FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS`
WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='yourdatabasename' and DATA_TYPE like '%bigint%' and IS_NULLABLE ='NO' order by COLUMN_TYPE;
you want to check more then thik link also help you.
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/columns-table.html
this generates a string of column names with a comma delimiter:
SELECT CONCAT('(',GROUP_CONCAT(`COLUMN_NAME`),')')
FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS`
WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='database_name'
AND `TABLE_NAME`='table_name';
function get_col_names(){
$sql = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM tableName";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
while($record = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
$fields[] = $record['0'];
}
foreach ($fields as $value){
echo 'column name is : '.$value.'-';
}
}
return get_col_names();
Not sure if this is what you were looking for, but this worked for me:
$query = query("DESC YourTable");
$col_names = array_column($query, 'Field');
That returns a simple array of the column names / variable names in your table or array as strings, which is what I needed to dynamically build MySQL queries. My frustration was that I simply don't know how to index arrays in PHP very well, so I wasn't sure what to do with the results from DESC or SHOW. Hope my answer is helpful to beginners like myself!
To check result: print_r($col_names);
SHOW COLUMNS in mysql 5.1 (not 5.5) uses a temporary disk table.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/internal-temporary-tables.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/show-columns.html
So it can be considered slow for some cases. At least, it can bump up your created_tmp_disk_tables value. Imagine one temporary disk table per connection or per each page request.
SHOW COLUMNS is not really so slow, possibly because it uses file system cache. Phpmyadmin says ~0.5ms consistently. This is nothing compared to 500ms-1000ms of serving a wordpress page. But still, there are times it matters. There is a disk system involvement, you never know what happens when server is busy, cache is full, hdd is stalled etc.
Retrieving column names through SELECT * FROM ... LIMIT 1 was around ~0.1ms, and it can use query cache as well.
So here is my little optimized code to get column names from a table, without using show columns if possible:
function db_columns_ar($table)
{
//returns Array('col1name'=>'col1name','col2name'=>'col2name',...)
if(!$table) return Array();
if(!is_string($table)) return Array();
global $db_columns_ar_cache;
if(!empty($db_columns_ar_cache[$table]))
return $db_columns_ar_cache[$table];
//IMPORTANT show columns creates a temp disk table
$cols=Array();
$row=db_row_ar($q1="SELECT * FROM `$table` LIMIT 1");
if($row)
{
foreach($row as $name=>$val)
$cols[$name]=$name;
}
else
{
$coldata=db_rows($q2="SHOW COLUMNS FROM `$table`");
if($coldata)
foreach($coldata as $row)
$cols[$row->Field]=$row->Field;
}
$db_columns_ar_cache[$table]=$cols;
//debugexit($q1,$q2,$row,$coldata,$cols);
return $cols;
}
Notes:
As long as your tables first row does not contain megabyte range of data, it should work fine.
The function names db_rows and db_row_ar should be replaced with your specific database setup.
IN WORDPRESS:
global $wpdb; $table_name=$wpdb->prefix.'posts';
foreach ( $wpdb->get_col( "DESC " . $table_name, 0 ) as $column_name ) {
var_dump( $column_name );
}
Try this one out I personally use it:
SHOW COLUMNS FROM $table where field REGEXP 'stock_id|drug_name'
This question is old, but I got here looking for a way to find a given query its field names in a dynamic way (not necessarily only the fields of a table). And since people keep pointing this as the answer for that given task in other related questions, I'm sharing the way I found it can be done, using Gavin Simpson's tips:
//Function to generate a HTML table from a SQL query
function myTable($obConn,$sql)
{
$rsResult = mysqli_query($obConn, $sql) or die(mysqli_error($obConn));
if(mysqli_num_rows($rsResult)>0)
{
//We start with header. >>>Here we retrieve the field names<<<
echo "<table width=\"100%\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"2\" cellpadding=\"0\"><tr align=\"center\" bgcolor=\"#CCCCCC\">";
$i = 0;
while ($i < mysqli_num_fields($rsResult)){
$field = mysqli_fetch_field_direct($rsResult, $i);
$fieldName=$field->name;
echo "<td><strong>$fieldName</strong></td>";
$i = $i + 1;
}
echo "</tr>";
//>>>Field names retrieved<<<
//We dump info
$bolWhite=true;
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($rsResult)) {
echo $bolWhite ? "<tr bgcolor=\"#CCCCCC\">" : "<tr bgcolor=\"#FFF\">";
$bolWhite=!$bolWhite;
foreach($row as $data) {
echo "<td>$data</td>";
}
echo "</tr>";
}
echo "</table>";
}
}
This can be easily modded to insert the field names in an array.
Using a simple: $sql="SELECT * FROM myTable LIMIT 1" can give you the fields of any table, without needing to use SHOW COLUMNS or any extra php module, if needed (removing the data dump part).
Hopefully this helps someone else.
if you use php, use this gist.
it can get select fields full info with no result,and all custom fields such as:
SELECT a.name aname, b.name bname, b.*
FROM table1 a LEFT JOIN table2 b
ON a.id = b.pid;
if above sql return no data,will also get the field names aname, bname, b's other field name
just two line:
$query_info = mysqli_query($link, $data_source);
$fetch_fields_result = $query_info->fetch_fields();
This query fetches a list of all columns in a database without having to specify a table name. It returns a list of only column names:
SELECT COLUMN_NAME
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE table_schema = 'db_name'
However, when I ran this query in phpmyadmin, it displayed a series of errors. Nonetheless, it worked. So use it with caution.
if you only need the field names and types (perhaps for easy copy-pasting into Excel):
SELECT COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA='databasenamegoeshere'
AND DATA_TYPE='decimal' and TABLE_NAME = 'tablenamegoeshere'
remove
DATA_TYPE='decimal'
if you want all data types
i no expert, but this works for me..
$sql = "desc MyTable";
$result = #mysql_query($sql);
while($row = #mysql_fetch_array($result)){
echo $row[0]."<br>"; // returns the first column of array. in this case Field
// the below code will return a full array-> Field,Type,Null,Key,Default,Extra
// for ($c=0;$c<sizeof($row);$c++){echo #$row[$c]."<br>";}
}
I have tried this query in SQL Server and this worked for me :
SELECT name FROM sys.columns WHERE OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID('table_name')
The call of DESCRIBE is working fine to get all columns of a table but if you need to filter on it, you need to use the SHOW COLUMNS FROM instead.
Example of PHP function to get all info of a table :
// get table columns (or return false if table not found)
function get_table_columns($db, $table) {
global $pdo;
if($cols = $pdo->query("DESCRIBE `$db`.`$table`")) {
if($cols = $cols->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
return $cols;
}
}
return false;
}
In my case, I had to find the primary key of a table. So, I used :
SHOW COLUMNS FROM `table` WHERE `Key`='PRI';
Here is my PHP function :
// get table Primary Key
function get_table_pk($db, $table) {
global $pdo;
$q = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM `$db`.`$table` WHERE `Key` = 'PRI'";
if($cols = $pdo->query($q)) {
if($cols = $cols->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
return $cols[0];
}
}
return false;
}
Right now I'm trying to set a variable from an SQL response without doing it more than necessary.
The situation is I have a SQL result from a SELECT + JOIN query with a user_id column that has only a single value. The other columns are different per row and I need to loop through them for that data. I was wondering if there was a way to extract the homogeneous value from the user_id column without setting it over and over again to a variable in my while loop.
Code:
#where I would like the $user_id to be set
while($responseArray = $response->fetch_assoc()){
$userId = $responseArray["user_id"]; #what I don't want to do
#other fetching stuff
}
SQL:
SELECT users.username, users.user_id, posts.post_id, posts.post_content, posts.number_comments, comments.comment_id, comments.comment_post_id
FROM users
JOIN posts
JOIN comments
WHERE delete_bit = 0 AND username = "john";
You cannot get away from fetching at least one result row. Even the fetchOne()-type functions do this. But if you only want a single row, why even bother using a loop in the first place?
$result = $db->query(...);
$row = $result->fetchRow();
$value = $row['somefield'];
would be far better than something silly like
$result = $db->query(...);
while($row = $result->fetchRow()) {
$value = $row['somefield'];
break;
}
I want to get the maximum id of row data. In my table first column is id then firstname and etc.
this is the sql command I used to get the max(id) of row data.
<?PHP $maxid=$this->db->query("SELECT MAX(id) FROM `emplyee_personal_details`");
print_r( $maxid) ;?>
but it prints bunch of data as it is a array. But I need only the maximam id of row data for validation before data inserting and updating.
How to get the maxid. I use codeigniter framework.
Try this:
$maxid = $this->db->query('SELECT MAX(id) AS `maxid` FROM `emplyee_personal_details`')->row()->maxid;
UPDATE
This will work even if your table is empty (unlike my example above):
$maxid = 0;
$row = $this->db->query('SELECT MAX(id) AS `maxid` FROM `emplyee_personal_details`')->row();
if ($row) {
$maxid = $row->maxid;
}
The problem with using a raw query like "SELECT MAX(id) ..." is it is not abstract and may not work for every SQL engine. I think the active record way to do it is like this:
$this->db->select_max('id');
$query = $this->db->get('emplyee_personal_details');
// Produces: SELECT MAX(id) as age FROM emplyee_personal_details
See: http://ellislab.com/codeigniter/user-guide/database/active_record.html
SELECT id FROM table ORDER BY id DESC LIMIT 1
That will get you the highest id value, and when I read this, "it prints bunch of data as it is a array" I get the sense that what you really want is a part of that array. DB queries always return complex structures like arrays or objects. So if you wanted just the scalar value (the number as an integer) you might use something like this:
$maxid = (int)$maxid['id'];
or like this (if you have an object):
$maxid = (int)$maxid->id;
HTH, ~Ray
Try this,hope it helps,
return $this->db->select_max('id')
->get('your_table_name')
->row()->id;
public function getMaxCategoryId() {
$query = $this->db->query("SELECT category_id+1 AS maxid FROM " . DB_PREFIX . "category ORDER BY category_id DESC LIMIT 1");
return $query->row['maxid'];
}
error undefined index maxid
<?php`$qry = "select max(ID)+1 As ID from records";`
$result = $con->query($qry);
$row = $result->fetch_assoc();`echo "New ID To Enter = ".$row["ID"];?>
After Connection Just Write This Code It Will Work
I know this is very simple, but I haven't used PHP/MySQL in a while and I have been reading other threads/php website and can't seem to get it.
How can I query a single row from a MySQL Table and print out all of the fields that have data in them? I need to exclude the NULL fields, and only add those that have data to an html list.
To clarify, I would like to display the field data without specifying the field names, just for the reason that I have a lot of fields and will not know which ones will be NULL or not.
What you've outlined requires 4 basic steps:
Connect to the database.
Query for a specific row.
Remove the null values from the result.
Create the html.
Step 1 is quite environment specific, so that we can safely skip here.
Step 2 - SQL
SELECT * from <tablename> WHERE <condition isolating single row>
Step 3 - PHP (assuming that $query represents the executed db query)
//convert the result to an array
$result_array = mysql_fetch_array($query);
//remove null values from the result array
$result_array = array_filter($result_array, 'strlen');
Step 4 - PHP
foreach ($result_array as $key => $value)
{
echo $value \n;
}
Just SELECT * FROM table_name WHERE.... will do the trick.
To grab data from specific fields, it would be SELECT field_1,field_2,field_3....
you have to make a string which represent mysql query. Then there is function in php named mysql_query(). Call this function with above string as parameter. It will return you all results. Here are some examples
You need to do it like this...
First connect to your sql... Reference
Now make a query and assign it to a variable...
$query = mysqli_query($connect, "SELECT column_name1, column_name2 FROM tablename");
If you want to retrieve a single row use LIMIT 1
$query = mysqli_query($connect, "SELECT column_name1, column_name2 FROM tablename LIMIT 1");
If you want to fetch all the columns just use * instead of column names and if you want to leave some rows where specific column data is blank you can do it like this
$query = mysqli_query($connect, "SELECT * FROM tablename WHERE column_name4 !=''");
Now fetch the array out of it and loop through the array like this..
while($show_rows = mysqli_fetch_array($query)) {
echo $show_rows['column_name1'];
echo $show_rows['column_name2'];
}
If you don't want to include the column names in the while loop, you could do this:
while($show_rows = mysqli_fetch_array($query)) {
foreach( $show_rows as $key => $val )
{
echo $show_rows[$key];
}
}
I'd like to get all of a mysql table's col names into an array in php?
Is there a query for this?
The best way is to use the INFORMATION_SCHEMA metadata virtual database. Specifically the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS table...
SELECT `COLUMN_NAME`
FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS`
WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='yourdatabasename'
AND `TABLE_NAME`='yourtablename';
It's VERY powerful, and can give you TONS of information without need to parse text (Such as column type, whether the column is nullable, max column size, character set, etc)...
Oh, and it's standard SQL (Whereas SHOW ... is a MySQL specific extension)...
For more information about the difference between SHOW... and using the INFORMATION_SCHEMA tables, check out the MySQL Documentation on INFORMATION_SCHEMA in general...
You can use the following query for MYSQL:
SHOW `columns` FROM `your-table`;
Below is the example code which shows How to implement above syntax in php to list the names of columns:
$sql = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM your-table";
$result = mysqli_query($conn,$sql);
while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($result)){
echo $row['Field']."<br>";
}
For Details about output of SHOW COLUMNS FROM TABLE visit: MySQL Refrence.
Seems there are 2 ways:
DESCRIBE `tablename`
or
SHOW COLUMNS FROM `tablename`
More on DESCRIBE here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/describe.html
I have done this in the past.
SELECT column_name
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_name='insert table name here';
Edit: Today I learned the better way of doing this. Please see ircmaxell's answer.
Parse the output of SHOW COLUMNS FROM table;
Here's more about it here: http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/show-columns.html
Use mysql_fetch_field() to view all column data. See manual.
$query = 'select * from myfield';
$result = mysql_query($query);
$i = 0;
while ($i < mysql_num_fields($result))
{
$fld = mysql_fetch_field($result, $i);
$myarray[]=$fld->name;
$i = $i + 1;
}
"Warning
This extension is deprecated as of PHP 5.5.0, and will be removed in the future."
The simplest solution out of all Answers:
DESC `table name`
or
DESCRIBE `table name`
or
SHOW COLUMNS FROM `table name`
An old PHP function "mysql_list_fields()" is deprecated. So, today the best way to get names of fields is a query "SHOW COLUMNS FROM table_name [LIKE 'name']". So, here is a little example:
$fields = array();
$res=mysql_query("SHOW COLUMNS FROM mytable");
while ($x = mysql_fetch_assoc($res)){
$fields[] = $x['Field'];
}
foreach ($fields as $f) { echo "<br>Field name: ".$f; }
when you want to check your all table structure with some filed then use this code. In this query i select column_name,column_type and table_name for more details . I use order by column_type so i can see it easily.
SELECT `COLUMN_NAME`,COLUMN_TYPE,TABLE_NAME
FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS`
WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='yourdatabasename' order by DATA_TYPE;
If you want to check only double type filed then you can do it easily
SELECT `COLUMN_NAME`,COLUMN_TYPE,TABLE_NAME,DATA_TYPE
FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS`
WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='yourdatabasename' AND DATA_TYPE like '%bigint%' order by DATA_TYPE;
if you want to check which field allow null type etc then you can use this
SELECT `COLUMN_NAME`,COLUMN_TYPE,TABLE_NAME,IS_NULLABLE,DATA_TYPE
FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS`
WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='yourdatabasename' and DATA_TYPE like '%bigint%' and IS_NULLABLE ='NO' order by COLUMN_TYPE;
you want to check more then thik link also help you.
https://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.7/en/columns-table.html
this generates a string of column names with a comma delimiter:
SELECT CONCAT('(',GROUP_CONCAT(`COLUMN_NAME`),')')
FROM `INFORMATION_SCHEMA`.`COLUMNS`
WHERE `TABLE_SCHEMA`='database_name'
AND `TABLE_NAME`='table_name';
function get_col_names(){
$sql = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM tableName";
$result = mysql_query($sql);
while($record = mysql_fetch_array($result)){
$fields[] = $record['0'];
}
foreach ($fields as $value){
echo 'column name is : '.$value.'-';
}
}
return get_col_names();
Not sure if this is what you were looking for, but this worked for me:
$query = query("DESC YourTable");
$col_names = array_column($query, 'Field');
That returns a simple array of the column names / variable names in your table or array as strings, which is what I needed to dynamically build MySQL queries. My frustration was that I simply don't know how to index arrays in PHP very well, so I wasn't sure what to do with the results from DESC or SHOW. Hope my answer is helpful to beginners like myself!
To check result: print_r($col_names);
SHOW COLUMNS in mysql 5.1 (not 5.5) uses a temporary disk table.
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/internal-temporary-tables.html
http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.1/en/show-columns.html
So it can be considered slow for some cases. At least, it can bump up your created_tmp_disk_tables value. Imagine one temporary disk table per connection or per each page request.
SHOW COLUMNS is not really so slow, possibly because it uses file system cache. Phpmyadmin says ~0.5ms consistently. This is nothing compared to 500ms-1000ms of serving a wordpress page. But still, there are times it matters. There is a disk system involvement, you never know what happens when server is busy, cache is full, hdd is stalled etc.
Retrieving column names through SELECT * FROM ... LIMIT 1 was around ~0.1ms, and it can use query cache as well.
So here is my little optimized code to get column names from a table, without using show columns if possible:
function db_columns_ar($table)
{
//returns Array('col1name'=>'col1name','col2name'=>'col2name',...)
if(!$table) return Array();
if(!is_string($table)) return Array();
global $db_columns_ar_cache;
if(!empty($db_columns_ar_cache[$table]))
return $db_columns_ar_cache[$table];
//IMPORTANT show columns creates a temp disk table
$cols=Array();
$row=db_row_ar($q1="SELECT * FROM `$table` LIMIT 1");
if($row)
{
foreach($row as $name=>$val)
$cols[$name]=$name;
}
else
{
$coldata=db_rows($q2="SHOW COLUMNS FROM `$table`");
if($coldata)
foreach($coldata as $row)
$cols[$row->Field]=$row->Field;
}
$db_columns_ar_cache[$table]=$cols;
//debugexit($q1,$q2,$row,$coldata,$cols);
return $cols;
}
Notes:
As long as your tables first row does not contain megabyte range of data, it should work fine.
The function names db_rows and db_row_ar should be replaced with your specific database setup.
IN WORDPRESS:
global $wpdb; $table_name=$wpdb->prefix.'posts';
foreach ( $wpdb->get_col( "DESC " . $table_name, 0 ) as $column_name ) {
var_dump( $column_name );
}
Try this one out I personally use it:
SHOW COLUMNS FROM $table where field REGEXP 'stock_id|drug_name'
This question is old, but I got here looking for a way to find a given query its field names in a dynamic way (not necessarily only the fields of a table). And since people keep pointing this as the answer for that given task in other related questions, I'm sharing the way I found it can be done, using Gavin Simpson's tips:
//Function to generate a HTML table from a SQL query
function myTable($obConn,$sql)
{
$rsResult = mysqli_query($obConn, $sql) or die(mysqli_error($obConn));
if(mysqli_num_rows($rsResult)>0)
{
//We start with header. >>>Here we retrieve the field names<<<
echo "<table width=\"100%\" border=\"0\" cellspacing=\"2\" cellpadding=\"0\"><tr align=\"center\" bgcolor=\"#CCCCCC\">";
$i = 0;
while ($i < mysqli_num_fields($rsResult)){
$field = mysqli_fetch_field_direct($rsResult, $i);
$fieldName=$field->name;
echo "<td><strong>$fieldName</strong></td>";
$i = $i + 1;
}
echo "</tr>";
//>>>Field names retrieved<<<
//We dump info
$bolWhite=true;
while ($row = mysqli_fetch_assoc($rsResult)) {
echo $bolWhite ? "<tr bgcolor=\"#CCCCCC\">" : "<tr bgcolor=\"#FFF\">";
$bolWhite=!$bolWhite;
foreach($row as $data) {
echo "<td>$data</td>";
}
echo "</tr>";
}
echo "</table>";
}
}
This can be easily modded to insert the field names in an array.
Using a simple: $sql="SELECT * FROM myTable LIMIT 1" can give you the fields of any table, without needing to use SHOW COLUMNS or any extra php module, if needed (removing the data dump part).
Hopefully this helps someone else.
if you use php, use this gist.
it can get select fields full info with no result,and all custom fields such as:
SELECT a.name aname, b.name bname, b.*
FROM table1 a LEFT JOIN table2 b
ON a.id = b.pid;
if above sql return no data,will also get the field names aname, bname, b's other field name
just two line:
$query_info = mysqli_query($link, $data_source);
$fetch_fields_result = $query_info->fetch_fields();
This query fetches a list of all columns in a database without having to specify a table name. It returns a list of only column names:
SELECT COLUMN_NAME
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE table_schema = 'db_name'
However, when I ran this query in phpmyadmin, it displayed a series of errors. Nonetheless, it worked. So use it with caution.
if you only need the field names and types (perhaps for easy copy-pasting into Excel):
SELECT COLUMN_NAME, DATA_TYPE
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA='databasenamegoeshere'
AND DATA_TYPE='decimal' and TABLE_NAME = 'tablenamegoeshere'
remove
DATA_TYPE='decimal'
if you want all data types
i no expert, but this works for me..
$sql = "desc MyTable";
$result = #mysql_query($sql);
while($row = #mysql_fetch_array($result)){
echo $row[0]."<br>"; // returns the first column of array. in this case Field
// the below code will return a full array-> Field,Type,Null,Key,Default,Extra
// for ($c=0;$c<sizeof($row);$c++){echo #$row[$c]."<br>";}
}
I have tried this query in SQL Server and this worked for me :
SELECT name FROM sys.columns WHERE OBJECT_ID = OBJECT_ID('table_name')
The call of DESCRIBE is working fine to get all columns of a table but if you need to filter on it, you need to use the SHOW COLUMNS FROM instead.
Example of PHP function to get all info of a table :
// get table columns (or return false if table not found)
function get_table_columns($db, $table) {
global $pdo;
if($cols = $pdo->query("DESCRIBE `$db`.`$table`")) {
if($cols = $cols->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
return $cols;
}
}
return false;
}
In my case, I had to find the primary key of a table. So, I used :
SHOW COLUMNS FROM `table` WHERE `Key`='PRI';
Here is my PHP function :
// get table Primary Key
function get_table_pk($db, $table) {
global $pdo;
$q = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM `$db`.`$table` WHERE `Key` = 'PRI'";
if($cols = $pdo->query($q)) {
if($cols = $cols->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
return $cols[0];
}
}
return false;
}