Thread: describe table (from perl)

What's the easiest way to have perl (using the DBI module) extract table
information? I need to be able to extract column names and types. (Something
like what is given by the MySql "DESCRIBE mytable" command).

Thanks,
Celia McInnis

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> What's the easiest way to have perl (using the DBI module) extract table
> information? I need to be able to extract column names and types. (Something
> like what is given by the MySql "DESCRIBE mytable" command).

You want the column_info() method: it's documented in DBI and in DBD::Pg.
Usage is something like this:

$table = "foobar";
$sth = $dbh->column_info('','',$table,'');
$info = $sth->fetchall_arrayref({});
print Dumper $info;

In particular, you want the COLUMN_NAME and TYPE_NAME attributes. Also look
at the "pg_type" attribute, which gives a friendlier version of TYPE_NAME.

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Greg Sabino Mullane greg@turnstep.com
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