Check if table exists [duplicate]

Solution 1:

DatabaseMetaData dbm = con.getMetaData();
// check if "employee" table is there
ResultSet tables = dbm.getTables(null, null, "employee", null);
if (tables.next()) {
  // Table exists
}
else {
  // Table does not exist
}

Solution 2:

You can use the available meta data:

  DatabaseMetaData meta = con.getMetaData();
  ResultSet res = meta.getTables(null, null, "My_Table_Name", 
     new String[] {"TABLE"});
  while (res.next()) {
     System.out.println(
        "   "+res.getString("TABLE_CAT") 
       + ", "+res.getString("TABLE_SCHEM")
       + ", "+res.getString("TABLE_NAME")
       + ", "+res.getString("TABLE_TYPE")
       + ", "+res.getString("REMARKS")); 
  }

See here for more details. Note also the caveats in the JavaDoc.

Solution 3:

I don't actually find any of the presented solutions here to be fully complete so I'll add my own. Nothing new here. You can stitch this together from the other presented solutions plus various comments.

There are at least two things you'll have to make sure:

1. Make sure you pass the table name to the getTables() method, rather than passing a null value. In the first case you let the database server filter the result for you, in the second you request a list of all tables from the server and then filter the list locally. The former is much faster if you are only searching for a single table.

2. Make sure to check the table name from the resultset with an equals match. The reason is that the getTables() does pattern matching on the query for the table and the _ character is a wildcard in SQL. Suppose you are checking for the existence of a table named EMPLOYEE_SALARY. You'll then get a match on EMPLOYEESSALARY too which is not what you want.

Ohh, and do remember to close those resultsets. Since Java 7 you would want to use a try-with-resources statement for that.

Here's a complete solution:

public static boolean tableExist(Connection conn, String tableName) throws SQLException {
    boolean tExists = false;
    try (ResultSet rs = conn.getMetaData().getTables(null, null, tableName, null)) {
        while (rs.next()) { 
            String tName = rs.getString("TABLE_NAME");
            if (tName != null && tName.equals(tableName)) {
                tExists = true;
                break;
            }
        }
    }
    return tExists;
}

You may want to consider what you pass as the types parameter (4th parameter) on your getTables() call. Normally I would just leave at null because you don't want to restrict yourself. A VIEW is as good as a TABLE, right? These days many databases allow you to update through a VIEW so restricting yourself to only TABLE type is in most cases not the way to go. YMMV.