JDBC: Get Column Details Example

In this tutorial, we are describing how to get column details of a table using JDBC API.

Get Column details :

For displaying details of table columns, You can use "SHOW COLUMNS table_name" query in MySql. It shows information about the all the columns of specified table. You can also put conditions to get column details by using LIKE/WHERE Clause.

SHOW COLUMNS provides the following values for your every table column-

• Field : It represents the column name.
• Type : It shows you data type of column.
• Collation : It represents the collation for non-binary string columns, and shows NULL for other columns. It is active when you use the FULL keyword.
• Null : This field has Boolean value and shows YES if the field can store Null value otherwise shows NO.
• Key : This field indicates the column index.

Example :

package jdbc;

import java.sql.Connection;
import java.sql.DriverManager;
import java.sql.ResultSet;
import java.sql.SQLException;
import java.sql.Statement;

class GetColumnType {
	public static void main(String[] args) {
		System.out.println("Get column name and type of a table in JDBC...");
		Connection con = null;
		ResultSet rs = null;
		Statement statement = null;
		String url = "jdbc:mysql://localhost:3306/";
		String dbName = "students";
		String driverName = "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver";
		String userName = "root";
		String password = "root";
		try {
			Class.forName(driverName);

			// Connecting to the database
			con = DriverManager.getConnection(url + dbName, userName, password);
			try {
				statement = con.createStatement();

				// Fetching Column details
				String sql = "SHOW COLUMNS FROM student";
				rs = statement.executeQuery(sql);

				System.out.println("Column Name\tColumn Type");
				System.out.println("---------------------------");
				while (rs.next()) {
					String name = rs.getString(1);
					String type = rs.getString(2);
					System.out.println(name + "\t\t" + type);
				}

			} catch (SQLException e) {
				System.out.println(e);
			}
			con.close();
		} catch (Exception e) {
			e.printStackTrace();
		}
	}
}

Output :

Get column name and type of a table in JDBC...
Column Name	Column Type
---------------------------
roll_no		int(11)
name		varchar(30)
course		varchar(30)

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