Select all columns except one in MySQL?

Question

I\'m trying to use a select statement to get all of the columns from a certain MySQL table except one. Is there a simple way to do this?

EDIT: There are 53 columns i

Answer 1

You could use DESCRIBE my_table and use the results of that to generate the SELECT statement dynamically.

Answer 2

I agree with the "simple" solution of listing all the columns, but this can be burdensome, and typos can cause lots of wasted time. I use a function "getTableColumns" to retrieve the names of my columns suitable for pasting into a query. Then all I need to do is to delete those I don't want.

CREATE FUNCTION `getTableColumns`(tablename varchar(100)) 
          RETURNS varchar(5000) CHARSET latin1
BEGIN
  DECLARE done INT DEFAULT 0;
  DECLARE res  VARCHAR(5000) DEFAULT "";

  DECLARE col  VARCHAR(200);
  DECLARE cur1 CURSOR FOR 
    select COLUMN_NAME from information_schema.columns 
    where TABLE_NAME=@table AND TABLE_SCHEMA="yourdatabase" ORDER BY ORDINAL_POSITION;
  DECLARE CONTINUE HANDLER FOR NOT FOUND SET done = 1;
  OPEN cur1;
  REPEAT
       FETCH cur1 INTO col;
       IF NOT done THEN 
          set res = CONCAT(res,IF(LENGTH(res)>0,",",""),col);
       END IF;
    UNTIL done END REPEAT;
  CLOSE cur1;
  RETURN res;

Your result returns a comma delimited string, for example...

col1,col2,col3,col4,...col53

Answer 3

Based on @Mahomedalid answer, I have done some improvements to support "select all columns except some in mysql"

SET @database    = 'database_name';
SET @tablename   = 'table_name';
SET @cols2delete = 'col1,col2,col3';

SET @sql = CONCAT(
'SELECT ', 
(
    SELECT GROUP_CONCAT( IF(FIND_IN_SET(COLUMN_NAME, @cols2delete), NULL, COLUMN_NAME ) )
    FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS WHERE TABLE_NAME = @tablename AND TABLE_SCHEMA = @database
), 
' FROM ',
@tablename);

SELECT @sql;

If you do have a lots of cols, use this sql to change group_concat_max_len

SET @@group_concat_max_len = 2048;

Answer 4

May be I have a solution to Jan Koritak's pointed out discrepancy

SELECT CONCAT('SELECT ',
( SELECT GROUP_CONCAT(t.col)
FROM
(
    SELECT CASE
    WHEN COLUMN_NAME = 'eid' THEN NULL
    ELSE COLUMN_NAME
    END AS col 
    FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS 
    WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'employee' AND TABLE_SCHEMA = 'test'
) t
WHERE t.col IS NOT NULL) ,
' FROM employee' );

Table :

SELECT table_name,column_name 
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS 
WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'employee' AND TABLE_SCHEMA = 'test'

================================

table_name  column_name
employee    eid
employee    name_eid
employee    sal

================================

Query Result:

'SELECT name_eid,sal FROM employee'

Answer 5

At first I thought you could use regular expressions, but as I've been reading the MYSQL docs it seems you can't. If I were you I would use another language (such as PHP) to generate a list of columns you want to get, store it as a string and then use that to generate the SQL.

Answer 6

You can do:

SELECT column1, column2, column4 FROM table WHERE whatever

without getting column3, though perhaps you were looking for a more general solution?