This is documentation for Kohana v2.3.x.

Database Metadata

Status	Draft
Todo	Needs review

Database Metadata

Below are methods that provide you with information about fields and tables in the database.

The usual way to call these methods would be from a method in your model, via $this→db. For example, you might do something like:

  $this->db->list_fields('some_table');

Note: Calls to these methods will not show up in the information displayed by the profiler library.

list_fields()

Database::list_fields($table) returns an array of the fields (columns) in the specified table.

[string] The name of the table to get information for.

field_data()

Database::field_data($table) returns an array, with one entry per field (collumn) in the database. Each entry in this array is an associative sub-array that specifies metadata about a field.

[string] The name of the table to get information for.

Note: The keys of the sub-array (and the metadata returned about each field) differ depending on the database driver in use.

Using the MySQL driver, each sub-array contains the following keys:

Field: The name of the field/column this sub-array refers to
Type: The field/column type, for example “int(10) unsigned”
Null: Does the field permit NULL values? May either be 'YES' or 'NO'.
Key: The field's key type. May be empty, or 'PRI' to indicate a primary key field.
Default: The field's default value for new records.
Extra: May be empty, or “auto_increment”.

table_exists()

Database::table_exists($table) returns TRUE or FALSE depending on whether the specified table exists in the database.

[string] The name of the table to check the existence of.

list_tables()

Database::list_tables() returns an array containing the names of all the tables in the database.

Continue to the next section: Database Query Caching >>