How can the "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS" statement be used in PHP to avoid errors when creating a table?

When creating a table in PHP using the "CREATE TABLE" statement, there might be errors if the table already exists in the database. To avoid these errors, you can use the "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS" statement, which will only create the table if it does not already exist. This way, you can prevent duplicate table creation errors in your PHP code. 

<?php
// Connect to 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);
}

// SQL query to create table if it does not exist
$sql = "CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS users (
    id INT(6) UNSIGNED AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
    firstname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
    lastname VARCHAR(30) NOT NULL,
    email VARCHAR(50),
    reg_date TIMESTAMP
)";

// Execute query
if ($conn->query($sql) === TRUE) {
    echo "Table created successfully";
} else {
    echo "Error creating table: " . $conn->error;
}

// Close connection
$conn->close();
?>

Keywords

PHP CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS error handling database table creation

Related Questions