Get table names using SELECT statement in MySQL

mysql

Mike Chamberlain · Dec 1, 2011 · Viewed 546k times · Source

In MySQL, I know I can list the tables in a database with:

SHOW TABLES

However, I want to insert these table names into another table, for instance:

INSERT INTO metadata(table_name) SHOW TABLES /* does not work */

Is there a way to get the table names using a standard SELECT statement, something like:

INSERT INTO metadata(table_name) SELECT name FROM table_names /* what should table_names be? */

Answer

To get the name of all tables use:

SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables;

To get the name of the tables from a specific database use:

SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables
WHERE table_schema = 'your_database_name';

Now, to answer the original question, use this query:

INSERT INTO table_name
    SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables
        WHERE table_schema = 'your_database_name';