MySQL check if a table exists without throwing an exception

What is the best way to check if a table exists in MySQL (preferably via PDO in PHP) without throwing an exception. I do not feel like parsing the results of "SHOW TABLES LIKE" et cetera. There must be some sort of boolean query?

I don't know the PDO syntax for it, but this seems pretty straight-forward:

$result = mysql_query("SHOW TABLES LIKE 'myTable'");
$tableExists = mysql_num_rows($result) > 0;

If you're using MySQL 5.0 and later, you could try:

SELECT COUNT(*)
FROM information_schema.tables 
WHERE table_schema = '[database name]' 
AND table_name = '[table name]';

Any results indicate the table exists.

From: http://www.electrictoolbox.com/check-if-mysql-table-exists/

Using mysqli i've created following function. Asuming you have an mysqli instance called $con.

function table_exist($table){
    global $con;
    $table = $con->real_escape_string($table);
    $sql = "show tables like '".$table."'";
    $res = $con->query($sql);
    return ($res->num_rows > 0);
}

Hope it helps.

Warning: as sugested by @jcaron this function could be vulnerable to sqlinjection attacs, so make sure your $table var is clean or even better use parameterised queries.

MySQL check if a table exists without throwing an exception

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