PHP and SQL question

[noelister]

Hello,

I was hoping that someone on here could help me out. I am trying to write a little program that reads a form and then writes it to a DB. However, I would like to check to see if the table exist first if so use that table if not create the table.

kinda like

PSEUDO CODE

if(tableName == tableName){
SELECT TABLE
}else{
CREATE TABLE
}

I know I would have to loop through the DB to see what tables exist. I'm just unsure of the format and syntax.

Thanks for the help
N

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

What you should be able to do is use something like

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS 'tablename' (...)

but I've never done that from a PHP page, just when setting up new tables via phpMyAdmin (or command line mysql administrating).

Once it's made (or not if it existed), you can make querys against it...

[noelister]

Okay,

Is that the SQL statement to do that (CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXIST)? Like you said i usually create my DB and table with myphpadmin.

[Mitthrawnuruodo]

Yes, that's the mysql I usually use to make new tables via phpMyAdmin:

--
-- Table structure for table `files`
--

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `files`;
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `files` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`parent` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
`file` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`thumb` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`desc` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) TYPE=MyISAM;

You could try something like:

mysql_query("CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS `files` (
`id` int(11) NOT NULL auto_increment,
`parent` int(11) NOT NULL default '0',
`file` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`thumb` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
`desc` varchar(255) NOT NULL default '',
PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
") or die ("Something's wrong!");

[noelister]

Okay, Thanks alot for the help.