How To List All Columns in a Table using odbc_columns()?

If you want to get a list of all columns in a table, you can use the odbc_columns() function, which can actually be used to list all columns in all tables and views in the database. The syntax of odbc_columns() is:

$result_set = odbc_columns($connection_object,
   $qualifier, # database name for SQL Server
   $schema, # schema name for SQL Server
   $table_name, # table or view name for SQL Server
   $column_name # column name
   )
#- The returning result set contains 5 fields:
#- TABLE_QUALIFIER, TABLE_SCHEM, TABLE_NAME, COLUMN_NAME
#- DATA_TYPE, TYPE_NAME, PRECISION, LENGTH, SCALE, RADIX
#- NULLABLE, REMARKS

The schema, table_name and column_name arguments accept search patterns ( '%' to match zero or more characters and '_' to match a single character).

The tutorial example below shows you how to get a list of columns in a table called fyi_rates in the current database, FyiCenterData, which is hard coded in the DSN definition:

<?php
  $con = odbc_connect('FYI_SQL_SERVER','sa','FYIcenter');

# odbc_tables($con, $database, $schema, $table, $column);
  $res = odbc_columns($con, 'FyiCenterData','%','fyi_rates','%');
  print("Column list of fyi_rates:\n");
  while (odbc_fetch_row($res)) {
     print("   ".odbc_result($res,2));
     print(", ".odbc_result($res,3));
     print(", ".odbc_result($res,4));
     print(", ".odbc_result($res,5));
     print(", ".odbc_result($res,6));
     print(", ".odbc_result($res,7));
     print(", ".odbc_result($res,8));
     print(", ".odbc_result($res,9));
     print(", ".odbc_result($res,10));
     print(", ".odbc_result($res,11));
     print(", ".odbc_result($res,12)."\n");
  }
  odbc_free_result($res);

  odbc_close($con); 
?>

If you run this script, you will get something like:

Column list of fyi_rates:
   dbo, fyi_rates, id, 4, int, 10, 4, 0, 10, 1,
   dbo, fyi_rates, comment, 12, varchar, 16, 16, , , 1,

Now you know that table, fyi_rates, has two columns: "id INT" and "comment VARCHAR(16)".

⇒ odbc_prepare() - Creating Prepared Statements

⇐ odbc_tables() - Listing All Tables in the Database

⇑ SQL Server FAQs - PHP ODBC Functions - Connection and Query Execution

⇑⇑ SQL Server Connection Tutorials