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How to Get Column Names from Database Table with Java

Let’s say you have a table in a SQL database and you want to discover the names of the columns from Java. One way to do this that is pretty straightforward is with the following code. 

import java.sql.*;
 
...
 
public ArrayList<String> GetColumnNames(String tableName) throws Exception
{
    DatabaseMetaData meta = _conn.getMetaData();
    ResultSet rsColumns = meta.getColumns(null, null, tableName, null);
 
    ArrayList<String> columnNames = new ArrayList<String>();
 
    while (rsColumns.next())
        columnNames.add(rsColumns.getString("COLUMN_NAME"));
 
    rsColumns.close();
 
    return columnNames;
}

I have only tested this with a SQLite database, but I can’t think of any reason it wouldn’t work with other database systems such as Oracle, mySQL, etc.

This entry was posted on Saturday, November 22nd, 2008 at 11:00 pm and is filed under Java, SQL. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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