Describing a Table
When you aren’t logged into the MySQL command line, here’s a handy piece of code that you can use to verify that a table has been correctly created from inside a browser. It simply issues the query DESCRIBE cats and then outputs an HTML table with four headings: Column, Type, Null, and Key, underneath which all columns within the table are shown.
<?php
<?php
require_once 'login.php';
$db_server = mysql_connect($db_hostname, $db_username, $db_password);
if (!$db_server) die("Unable to connect to MySQL: " . mysql_error());
mysql_select_db($db_database)
or die("Unable to select database: " . mysql_error());
$query = "DESCRIBE cats";
$result = mysql_query($query);
if (!$result) die ("Database access failed: " . mysql_error());
$rows = mysql_num_rows($result);
echo "<table><tr> <th>Column</th> <th>Type</th>
<th>Null</th> <th>Key</th> </tr>";
for ($j = 0 ; $j < $rows ; ++$j)
{
$row = mysql_fetch_row($result);
echo "<tr>";
for ($k = 0 ; $k < 4 ; ++$k) echo "<td>$row[$k]</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}
echo "</table>";
?>
