How to retrieve table names in a mysql database with Python and MySQLdb?

Question

I have an SQL database and am wondering what command you use to just get a list of the table names within that database.

Answer 1

SHOW tables

15 chars

Answer 2

To be a bit more complete:

import MySQLdb

connection = MySQLdb.connect(
                host = 'localhost',
                user = 'myself',
                passwd = 'mysecret')  # create the connection

cursor = connection.cursor()     # get the cursor


cursor.execute("USE mydatabase") # select the database

cursor.execute("SHOW TABLES")    # execute 'SHOW TABLES' (but data is not returned)

now there are two options:

tables = cursor.fetchall()       # return data from last query

or iterate over the cursor:

 for (table_name,) in cursor:
        print(table_name)

Answer 3

It is also possible to obtain tables from a specific scheme with execute the single query with the driver below.

python3 -m pip install PyMySQL

import pymysql

# Connect to the database
conn = pymysql.connect(host='127.0.0.1',user='root',passwd='root',db='my_database')

# Create a Cursor object
cur = conn.cursor()

# Execute the query: To get the name of the tables from a specific database
# replace only the my_database with the name of your database
cur.execute("SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema = 'my_database'")

# Read and print tables
for table in [tables[0] for tables in cur.fetchall()]:
    print(table)

output:

my_table_name_1
my_table_name_2
my_table_name_3
...
my_table_name_x

Answer 4

show tables will help. Here is the documentation.