Equivalent of mysql_list_tables in PHP PDO?

What about using a SQL query that does something like this : show tables Or, if needed, specifying the database : show tables from crawler And, if you only want to get some tables : show tables from crawler like 'site% Actually, even if the mysql_list_tables() function exists, its manual page states : This function is deprecated. It is preferable to use mysql_query() to issue a SQL SHOW TABLES FROM db_name LIKE 'pattern' statement instead So, this should be quite OK with PDO, I'm guessing And, testing with PDO : $db = new PDO('mysql:dbname=crawler;host=127.0.0.1', 'crawler', 'crawler'); $result = $db->query("show tables"); while ($row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM)) { var_dump($row0); } I'm getting this kind of output : string 'headers' (length=7) string 'headers_sites' (length=13) string 'headers_sites_0' (length=15) ... string 'headers_sites_7' (length=15) string 'reporting_sites_servers_software' (length=32) string 'servers' (length=7) string 'sites' (length=5) string 'sites_0' (length=7) ... string 'sites_servers' (length=13) string 'sites_software' (length=14) string 'software' (length=8) Which fits with the tables I actually have in this database.

What about using a SQL query that does something like this : show tables Or, if needed, specifying the database : show tables from crawler And, if you only want to get some tables : show tables from crawler like 'site%' Actually, even if the mysql_list_tables() function exists, its manual page states : This function is deprecated. It is preferable to use mysql_query() to issue a SQL SHOW TABLES FROM db_name LIKE 'pattern' statement instead. So, this should be quite OK with PDO, I'm guessing.

And, testing with PDO : $db = new PDO('mysql:dbname=crawler;host=127.0.0.1', 'crawler', 'crawler'); $result = $db->query("show tables"); while ($row = $result->fetch(PDO::FETCH_NUM)) { var_dump($row0); } I'm getting this kind of output : string 'headers' (length=7) string 'headers_sites' (length=13) string 'headers_sites_0' (length=15) ... string 'headers_sites_7' (length=15) string 'reporting_sites_servers_software' (length=32) string 'servers' (length=7) string 'sites' (length=5) string 'sites_0' (length=7) ... string 'sites_servers' (length=13) string 'sites_software' (length=14) string 'software' (length=8) Which fits with the tables I actually have in this database.

Yes. This will work as long as the "show tables" query syntax is valid for all the PDO supported database drivers. Is this the case?

– saintsjd Sep 20 '09 at 19:01 For example, Postgres uses "\dt" to list tables and not "Show Tables". So if our goal is cross-database compatibility (using PDO), then this way will not work. – saintsjd Sep 20 '09 at 19:05 @saintsjd : probably not, unfortunatly :-( ;; going through the sources of the Doctrine ORM framework, the query used to list the tables of a DB is a bit more complicated for MsSQL, more complicated again for SQLite, and even more complicated for PgSQL :-( – Pascal MARTIN Sep 20 '09 at 19:06 If achieving cross-database compatibility is your real goal, you'll probably better using something like Doctrine (which implements lots of stuff related to DB-compatibility), might I add : PDO is nice, but it only abstract some differences (like not having to use mysqli_* or pg_* or ...) ;; it doesn't abstract the differences between SQL syntaxes that each DB engine understand.

– Pascal MARTIN Sep 20 '09 at 19:10 2 That's why the docu at uk.php. Net/manual/en/intro.pdo. Php says: "PDO does not provide a database abstraction" – VolkerK Sep 20 '09 at 19:12.

If you want to do this in a cross-platform way, look into Zend Framework's Zend_Db, which provides the listTables() method.

If you want a portable way to query for the schema, you can use the ansi standard INFORMATION_SCHEMA.

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