How to get all columns' names for all the tables in MySQL?

Question

Is there a fast way of getting all column names from all tables in MySQL, without having to list all the tables?

Answer 1

SELECT * FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_schema = DATABASE()
ORDER BY table_name, ordinal_position

Since I don't have enough rep to comment, here's a minor improvement (in my view) over nick rulez's excellent answer: replacing WHERE table_schema = 'your_db' with WHERE table_schema = DATABASE().

Answer 2

Piggybacking on Nicola's answer with some readable php

$a = mysqli_query($conn,"select * from information_schema.columns
where table_schema = 'your_db'
order by table_name,ordinal_position");
$b = mysqli_fetch_all($a,MYSQLI_ASSOC);
$d = array();
foreach($b as $c){
    if(!is_array($d[$c['TABLE_NAME']])){
        $d[$c['TABLE_NAME']] = array();
    }
    $d[$c['TABLE_NAME']][] = $c['COLUMN_NAME'];
}
echo "<pre>",print_r($d),"</pre>";

Answer 3

<?php
        $table = 'orders';
        $query = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM $table";
        if($output = mysql_query($query)):
            $columns = array();
            while($result = mysql_fetch_assoc($output)):
                $columns[] = $result['Field'];
            endwhile;
        endif;
        echo '<pre>';
        print_r($columns);
        echo '</pre>';
?>

Answer 4

Similar to the answer posted by @suganya this doesn't directly answer the question but is a quicker alternative for a single table:

DESCRIBE column_name;

Answer 5

The question was :

Is there a fast way of getting all COLUMN NAMES from all tables in MySQL, without having to list all the tables?

SQL to get all information for each column

select * from information_schema.columns
where table_schema = 'your_db'
order by table_name,ordinal_position

SQL to get all COLUMN NAMES

select COLUMN_NAME from information_schema.columns
where table_schema = 'your_db'
order by table_name,ordinal_position

Answer 6

On the offchance that it's useful to anyone else, this will give you a comma-delimited list of the columns in each table:

SELECT table_name,GROUP_CONCAT(column_name ORDER BY ordinal_position)
FROM information_schema.columns
WHERE table_schema = DATABASE()
GROUP BY table_name
ORDER BY table_name

Note : When using tables with a high number of columns and/or with long field names, be aware of the group_concat_max_len limit, which can cause the data to get truncated.