How to get a list of column names - sqlite

Question

Is it possible to get a row with all column names of a table like this?
|id|foo|bar|age|street|address|
I don't like to use Pragma table_info(bla).

Answer 1

SELECT sql FROM sqlite_master
WHERE tbl_name = 'table_name' AND type = 'table'
Then parse this value with Reg Exp (it's easy) which could looks similar to this: [(.*?)]
Alternatively you can use:
PRAGMA table_info(table_name)

Answer 2

If you are using the command line shell to SQLite then .headers on before you perform your query. You only need to do this once in a given session.

Answer 3

You can use pragma related commands in sqlite like below
pragma table_info("table_name")
--Alternatively
select * from pragma_table_info("table_name")
If you require column names like id|foo|bar|age|street|address, basically your answer is in below query.
select group_concat(name,'|') from pragma_table_info("table_name")

Answer 4

Yes, you can achieve this by using the following commands:
sqlite> .headers on
sqlite> .mode column
The result of a select on your table will then look like:
id foo bar age street address
---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ---------- ----------
1 val1 val2 val3 val4 val5
2 val6 val7 val8 val9 val10

Answer 5

This helps for HTML5 SQLite:
tx.executeSql('SELECT name, sql FROM sqlite_master WHERE type="table" AND name = "your_table_name";', [], function (tx, results) {
var columnParts = results.rows.item(0).sql.replace(/^[^\(]+\(([^\)]+)\)/g, '$1').split(','); ///// RegEx
var columnNames = [];
for(i in columnParts) {
if(typeof columnParts[i] === 'string')
columnNames.push(columnParts[i].split(" ")[0]);
}
console.log(columnNames);
///// Your code which uses the columnNames;
});
You can reuse the regex in your language to get the column names.
Shorter Alternative:
tx.executeSql('SELECT name, sql FROM sqlite_master WHERE type="table" AND name = "your_table_name";', [], function (tx, results) {
var columnNames = results.rows.item(0).sql.replace(/^[^\(]+\(([^\)]+)\)/g, '$1').replace(/ [^,]+/g, '').split(',');
console.log(columnNames);
///// Your code which uses the columnNames;
});

Answer 6

Use a recursive query. Given
create table t (a int, b int, c int);
Run:
with recursive
a (cid, name) as (select cid, name from pragma_table_info('t')),
b (cid, name) as (
select cid, '|' || name || '|' from a where cid = 0
union all
select a.cid, b.name || a.name || '|' from a join b on a.cid = b.cid + 1
)
select name
from b
order by cid desc
limit 1;
Alternatively, just use group_concat:
select '|' || group_concat(name, '|') || '|' from pragma_table_info('t')
Both yield:
|a|b|c|

Answer 7

The result set of a query in PHP offers a couple of functions allowing just that:
numCols()
columnName(int $column_number )
Example
$db = new SQLIte3('mysqlite.db');
$table = 'mytable';
$tableCol = getColName($db, $table);
for ($i=0; $i<count($tableCol); $i++){
echo "Column $i = ".$tableCol[$i]."\n";
}
function getColName($db, $table){
$qry = "SELECT * FROM $table LIMIT 1";
$result = $db->query($qry);
$nCols = $result->numCols();
for ($i = 0; $i < $ncols; $i++) {
$colName[$i] = $result->columnName($i);
}
return $colName;
}

Answer 8

$<?
$db = sqlite_open('mysqlitedb');
$cols = sqlite_fetch_column_types('form name'$db, SQLITE_ASSOC);
foreach ($cols as $column => $type) {
echo "Column: $column Type: $type\n";
}

Answer 9

Using #Tarkus's answer, here are the regexes I used in R:
getColNames <- function(conn, tableName) {
x <- dbGetQuery( conn, paste0("SELECT sql FROM sqlite_master WHERE tbl_name = '",tableName,"' AND type = 'table'") )[1,1]
x <- str_split(x,"\\n")[[1]][-1]
x <- sub("[()]","",x)
res <- gsub( '"',"",str_extract( x[1], '".+"' ) )
x <- x[-1]
x <- x[-length(x)]
res <- c( res, gsub( "\\t", "", str_extract( x, "\\t[0-9a-zA-Z_]+" ) ) )
res
}
Code is somewhat sloppy, but it appears to work.

Answer 10

Try this sqlite table schema parser, I implemented the sqlite table parser for parsing the table definitions in PHP.
It returns the full definitions (unique, primary key, type, precision, not null, references, table constraints... etc)
https://github.com/maghead/sqlite-parser

Answer 11

Easiest way to get the column names of the most recently executed SELECT is to use the cursor's description property. A Python example:
print_me = "("
for description in cursor.description:
print_me += description[0] + ", "
print(print_me[0:-2] + ')')
# Example output: (inp, output, reason, cond_cnt, loop_likely)