How to Retrieve Table Column Names Using PDO in MySQL?

Retrieving Table Column Names with PDO

Question:

How do I retrieve the column names of a table using PDO?

Context:

Consider a table named "contacts" with the following columns:

• id
• name
• age

Attempt:

An attempt was made using the following code:

<code class="php">$db = $connection->get_connection();
$select = $db->query('SELECT * FROM contacts');

$total_column = $select->columnCount();
var_dump($total_column);

for ($counter = 0; $counter < $total_column; $counter ++) {
    $meta = $select->getColumnMeta($counter);
    $column[] = $meta['name'];
}
print_r($column);</code>

However, this attempt produced an unexpected result, returning all column names, including non-existent columns.

Solution (MySQL-specific):

An alternative solution for MySQL databases is as follows:

<code class="php">$table_fields = $dbh->query("DESCRIBE tablename")->fetchAll(PDO::FETCH_COLUMN);</code>

This query retrieves the table's column names using the "DESCRIBE" command. The result is an array containing the column names in the order they appear in the table's schema.

Output:

Array
(
    [0] => id
    [1] => name
    [2] => age
    ...
)

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