How can PHP be used to extract information about the structure of tables in a MySQL database?

To extract information about the structure of tables in a MySQL database using PHP, you can use the `SHOW COLUMNS` query to retrieve the column names, data types, and other properties of the table. This information can be useful for tasks such as dynamically generating forms or building queries based on the table structure. 

<?php
// Connect to MySQL database
$servername = "localhost";
$username = "username";
$password = "password";
$dbname = "database";

$conn = new mysqli($servername, $username, $password, $dbname);

// Check connection
if ($conn->connect_error) {
    die("Connection failed: " . $conn->connect_error);
}

// Query to get table structure
$sql = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM table_name";
$result = $conn->query($sql);

if ($result->num_rows > 0) {
    while($row = $result->fetch_assoc()) {
        echo "Field: " . $row["Field"] . " - Type: " . $row["Type"] . "<br>";
    }
} else {
    echo "0 results";
}

$conn->close();
?>

Keywords

PHP MySQL database table structure information extraction database schema

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