MySQL query to get column names?

mysql, php

Solution

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...

Problem

I'd like to get all of a mysql table's col names into an array in php? Is there a query for this?

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