How to manipulate MySQL tables

This page gives some simple tasks to do with manipulating the tables in a MySQL database.

To find what columns a table tablename contains,

SHOW COLUMNS IN tablename;

To add a new column called colname with a boolean type to a table called name,

mysql> ALTER TABLE name ADD COLUMN colname BOOLEAN;

To remove a column called colname from a table name,

mysql> ALTER TABLE name DROP colname;

To put an existing column called colname with the type INTEGER as the first column in the table, use

mysql> alter table tablename modify colname integer first;

To put a column called col1 with the type INTEGER after col2 in the ordering, use

mysql> alter table tablename modify col1 integer after col2;

The type of col2 does not need to be specified.]]>