How can I get the list of a columns in a table for a SQLite database?

Question

I am looking to retrieve a list of columns in a table. The database is the latest release of SQLite (3.6, I believe). I am looking for code that does this with a SQL query

Answer 1

What you're looking for is called the data dictionary. In sqlite a list of all tables can be found by querying sqlite_master table (or view?)

sqlite> create table people (first_name varchar, last_name varchar, email_address varchar);
sqlite> select * from sqlite_master;
table|people|people|2|CREATE TABLE people (first_name varchar, last_name varchar, email_address varchar)

To get column information you can use the pragma table_info(table_name) statement:

sqlite> pragma table_info(people);
0|first_name|varchar|0||0
1|last_name|varchar|0||0
2|email_address|varchar|0||0

For more information on the pragma statements, see the documentation.

Answer 2

Building on the above, you can do it all at once:

sqlite3 yourdb.db ".schema"

That will give you the SQL to create the table, which is effectively a list of the columns.