phpmysqlmultiple-tablesdescribe

SHOW COLUMNS from multiple tables

I am trying to get the column names from 2 tables.

I tried a query like: (SHOW COLUMNS FROM users) UNION (SHOW COLUMNS FROM posts) but that does not work & returns a syntax error. I tried the same query using DESCRIBE but that did not work either. How can I get all the column names from multiple tables in a single query? Is it possible?

Solution

  • From the docs for version 5.0 (http://dev.mysql.com/doc/refman/5.0/en/show-columns.html)

    "SHOW COLUMNS displays information about the columns in a given table"

    So you can't really use it on multiple tables. However if you have information_schema database then you could use it like follows: 

    select column_name 
from `information_schema`.`columns` 
where `table_schema` = 'mydb' and `table_name` in ('users', 'posts');

    Here you'd have to replace the mydb with your database name, or just use DATABASE().