Command guide

beginner metadata MySQL MariaDB SQL Server PostgreSQL SQLite

List Columns In A Table

Inspect a table definition to see its column names and data types.

5/5 supported engines validation-green 1 example 2 scenarios

Docker-validated Not currently validation-green

Example 1

List column names for one table

Schema-inspection pages need per-engine output because even equivalent types are often labeled differently.

MySQL

Engine-specific syntax

Source table data

Setup

CREATE TABLE books (id INT, title VARCHAR(50));

Validated query

SQL

SHOW COLUMNS
FROM
  books;

Expected result

Field	Type	Null	Key	Default	Extra
id	int	YES		NULL
title	varchar(50)	YES		NULL

MariaDB

Engine-specific syntax

Source table data

Setup

CREATE TABLE books (id INT, title VARCHAR(50));

Validated query

SQL

SHOW COLUMNS
FROM
  books;

Expected result

Field	Type	Null	Key	Default	Extra
id	int(11)	YES		NULL
title	varchar(50)	YES		NULL

SQL Server

Engine-specific syntax

Source table data

Setup

CREATE TABLE books (id INT, title VARCHAR(50));

Validated query

SQL

SELECT
  COLUMN_NAME,
  DATA_TYPE
FROM
  INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS
WHERE
  TABLE_NAME = 'books'
ORDER BY
  ORDINAL_POSITION;

Expected result

COLUMN_NAME	DATA_TYPE
id	int
title	varchar

PostgreSQL

Engine-specific syntax

Source table data

Setup

CREATE TABLE books (id INT, title VARCHAR(50));

Validated query

SQL

SELECT
  column_name,
  data_type
FROM
  information_schema.columns
WHERE
  table_schema = 'public'
  AND table_name = 'books'
ORDER BY
  ordinal_position;

Expected result

column_name	data_type
id	integer
title	character varying

SQLite

Engine-specific syntax

Source table data

Setup

CREATE TABLE books (id INT, title VARCHAR(50));

Validated query

SQL

PRAGMA table_info (books);

Expected result

cid	name	type	notnull	dflt_value	pk
0	id	INT	0	NULL	0
1	title	VARCHAR(50)	0	NULL	0

Data type names and metadata columns differ materially across engines, so normalization would hide real differences.

Useful when

Where this command helps.

checking available columns before writing a query
verifying column types after a schema migration

Explanation

What the command is doing.

Column inspection is common when exploring a schema. The exact metadata query differs by engine, but the concept is stable: return one row per column in the target table.

List Columns In A Table

List column names for one table

Where this command helps.

What the command is doing.

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