Check if table exists in MySQL and display the warning if it exists?

Arjun Thakur

Answered on 13th Jun, 2019

To check if table exists, use the following syntax −

CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS yourTableName
(
   yourColumnName1 dataType,
   .
   .
   .
   .
   N
);

Here, we will try to create a table that already exists and then it will produce a warning message “Table already exists”. Let us first create a table. This table already exists −

mysql> CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS DemoTable
   (
   Id int
   );
Query OK, 0 rows affected, 1 warning (0.06 sec)

The warning message is as follows −

mysql> show warnings;

Output

+-------+------+-------------------------------------+
| Level | Code | Message                             |
+-------+------+-------------------------------------+
| Note  | 1050 | Table 'DemoTable' already exists    |
+-------+------+-------------------------------------+
1 row in set (0.00 sec)

If table does not already exist, then it will get created −

mysql> CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS DemoTable2
   (
   Id int
   );
Query OK, 0 rows affected (0.71 sec)