How to find all the tables in MySQL with specific column names in them?

Question

I have 2-3 different column names that I want to look up in the entire DB and list out all tables which have those columns. Any easy script?

Answer 1

The problem with information_schema is that it can be terribly slow. It is faster to use the SHOW commands.

After you select the database you first send the query SHOW TABLES. And then you do SHOW COLUMNS for each of the tables.

In PHP that would look something like

    $res = mysqli_query("SHOW TABLES");
    while($row = mysqli_fetch_array($res))
    {   $rs2 = mysqli_query("SHOW COLUMNS FROM ".$row[0]);
        while($rw2 = mysqli_fetch_array($rs2))
        {   if($rw2[0] == $target)
               ....
        }
    }