What are the best practices for retrieving table names in PHP, considering the evolution of PHP and MySQL?
When retrieving table names in PHP, it is best to use the PDO extension for database connections as it provides a more secure and efficient way to interact with databases. To retrieve table names in MySQL using PDO, you can query the information_schema database which contains metadata about all databases and tables.
// Establish a connection to the database using PDO
$pdo = new PDO('mysql:host=localhost;dbname=your_database', 'username', 'password');
// Query the information_schema database to retrieve table names
$query = $pdo->query("SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema = 'your_database'");
// Fetch table names and display them
while ($row = $query->fetch(PDO::FETCH_ASSOC)) {
echo $row['table_name'] . "<br>";
}