Sometimes it is useful to know if a field exists in a mysql table before running a query using that field name, especially when the field name is coming from some kind of user input.
So to do this we use the function mysql_list_fields to grab the fields out of a table and run through them with a for loop until we find the one we are looking for – using the function mysql_field_name, in which case we return true. If we don’t find it, the function returns false.
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And it’s that easy!
Just another approach for checking on the availability of a column using PHP:
$chkcol = mysql_query(“SELECT * FROM `table_name` LIMIT 1”);
$mycol = mysql_fetch_array($chkcol);
if(isset($mycol[‘my_column’]))
echo “Column my_column exists! Do something…”;