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

In MySQL, you can retrieve all column names for all tables by querying the information_schema database. information_schema is a special MySQL database that stores metadata about the database, such as table structures and column information.

Here is a specific SQL query example that returns the column names for all tables in a specified database:

sql
SELECT TABLE_NAME, COLUMN_NAME
FROM information_schema.COLUMNS
WHERE TABLE_SCHEMA = 'your_database_name';

In this query:

• TABLE_NAME represents the name of the table where the column resides.
• COLUMN_NAME is the name of the column.
• TABLE_SCHEMA specifies the database name where the column resides; replace 'your_database_name' with your target database name.

This query returns all column names and their respective table names for the specified database.

Suppose we have a database named school containing two tables, students and teachers. The students table has three columns: id, name, and grade, while the teachers table has three columns: id, name, and subject. Executing this query will yield the following results:

TABLE_NAME	COLUMN_NAME
students	id
students	name
students	grade
teachers	id
teachers	name
teachers	subject

This allows you to clearly see which columns exist in each table and their names. This is very useful for database management, maintenance, or data migration.