How to get all columns' names for all the tables in MySQL?

Question

Is there a fast way of getting all column names from all tables in MySQL, without having to list all the tables?

Drawers

I only need a quick overview over the database. Its not gonna be code in an app. – Drawers

Answer 1

select column_name from information_schema.columns
where table_schema = 'your_db'
order by table_name,ordinal_position

Knowles

Answer 2

To list all the fields from a table in MySQL:

select * 
  from information_schema.columns 
 where table_schema = 'your_DB_name' 
   and table_name = 'Your_tablename'

Preponderate

Answer 3

it is better that you use the following query to get all column names easily

Show columns from tablename

Physic

Sometimes you need a solution that doesn't rely on information_schema – Hendry

Also this gives only the columns of the given table tablename which is not what OP asked for. – Swingletree

Answer 4

SELECT * FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_schema = DATABASE()
ORDER BY table_name, ordinal_position

Since I don't have enough rep to comment, here's a minor improvement (in my view) over nick rulez's excellent answer: replacing WHERE table_schema = 'your_db' with WHERE table_schema = DATABASE().

Shortcoming

That's helpful. It always annoys me to hardcode things like that when it can be avoided. Thanks. – Leila

Answer 5

On the offchance that it's useful to anyone else, this will give you a comma-delimited list of the columns in each table:

SELECT table_name,GROUP_CONCAT(column_name ORDER BY ordinal_position)
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_schema = DATABASE()
GROUP BY table_name
ORDER BY table_name

Note : When using tables with a high number of columns and/or with long field names, be aware of the group_concat_max_len limit, which can cause the data to get truncated.

Kurtis

Answer 6

The question was :

Is there a fast way of getting all COLUMN NAMES from all tables in MySQL, without having to list all the tables?

SQL to get all information for each column

select * from information_schema.columns
where table_schema = 'your_db'
order by table_name,ordinal_position

SQL to get all COLUMN NAMES

select COLUMN_NAME from information_schema.columns
where table_schema = 'your_db'
order by table_name,ordinal_position

Mithraism

Answer 7

Similar to the answer posted by @suganya this doesn't directly answer the question but is a quicker alternative for a single table:

DESCRIBE column_name;

Bruch

This will print a table and not just the table's column names. – Cuthbertson

Answer 8

I wrote this silly thing a long time ago and still actually use it now and then:

https://gist.github.com/kphretiq/e2f924416a326895233d

Basically, it does a "SHOW TABLES", then a "DESCRIBE " on each table, then spits it out as markdown.

Just edit below the "if name" and go. You'll need to have pymysql installed.

Intercross

Answer 9

Piggybacking on Nicola's answer with some readable php

$a = mysqli_query($conn,"select * from information_schema.columns
where table_schema = 'your_db'
order by table_name,ordinal_position");
$b = mysqli_fetch_all($a,MYSQLI_ASSOC);
$d = array();
foreach($b as $c){
    if(!is_array($d[$c['TABLE_NAME']])){
        $d[$c['TABLE_NAME']] = array();
    }
    $d[$c['TABLE_NAME']][] = $c['COLUMN_NAME'];
}
echo "<pre>",print_r($d),"</pre>";

Quail

'some readable php'..Naming variables with a,b ,c is not what I would call readable – Sudor

Answer 10

You can query all columns per table in specific database using this query

select
    TABLE_SCHEMA,
    TABLE_NAME,
    COLUMN_NAME
from
    information_schema.columns
where
    table_schema = 'database_name'
order by 
    table_name,
    ordinal_position;

Obumbrate

Answer 11

You can simply get all columns of a table using information_schema.columns just add group_concat to get a comma separated list of columns.

select group_concat( column_name ) as ColumnNames from information_schema.columns where table_schema = 'ur_db_name' and table_name = 'ur_tbl_name'

Jollenta