SQL query - I don't know all identifiers

To simply get the column names and types of a table.
You could SHOW them.

SHOW COLUMNS FROM myTable;

But if you want to know the column names of your table, and only a bit of data from it (to see what it looks like).

Then use LIMIT to get only a few records.

SELECT * 
FROM myTable
LIMIT 3

It's fast and easy.

But you can also just see the columns without data if you use a criteria that's false.

SELECT * 
FROM myTable
WHERE 0=1

You can also use:

show create table table_name;

but as "LukStorms" mentioned, the below statement shows you the data in table format and in a pretier way

show columns from table_name;

Related