What are the potential drawbacks of using the mysql_query function in PHP for retrieving column names?

The potential drawback of using the mysql_query function in PHP for retrieving column names is that it is deprecated and may not work with newer versions of PHP. To solve this issue, you can use the mysqli or PDO extension in PHP to retrieve column names from a MySQL database.

// Connect to the database using mysqli
$mysqli = new mysqli("localhost", "username", "password", "database");

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

// Get column names from a table
$result = $mysqli->query("SELECT * FROM table_name");
if ($result) {
    $fields = $result->fetch_fields();
    foreach ($fields as $field) {
        echo $field->name . "<br>";
    }
} else {
    echo "Error: " . $mysqli->error;
}

// Close connection
$mysqli->close();