The answers you have already had are good ones.
To add to those: you can find more details about the
system tables here:
http://www5.uk.postgresql.org/users-lounge/docs/7.2/postgres/catalogs.html
--- Geoff Caplan <geoff@advantae.com> wrote:
> Hi folks
>
> I'm porting quite a big PHP application from MySql
> and have hit an issue.
>
> I have a number of PHP functions in the app which
> return meta-info about
> the data structure:
>
> list_databases( ) ;
> list_tables( $database_name ) ;
> list_field_names( $table_name ) ;
> is_existing_field( $table_name ) ;
>
> With MySql, this info is readily available using the
> various SHOW queries,
> but I can't figure out how to do this with Postgres.
>
> The only option I have come up with is to shell out
> to psql, run \l and \d
> commands, and use a regex to parse the strings
> returned. Clearly, this
> would be a bit of a hack, and not resource
> efficient.
>
> Can any kind person suggest a more effective
> approach? I am brand new to
> Postgres, and doing this under considerable time
> pressure, so apologies if
> I am missing anything obvious - I can't find
> anything in the docs, or in
> the articles on porting from MySQL...
>
>
> Geoff Caplan
> Advantae Ltd
>
>
> ---------------------------(end of
> broadcast)---------------------------
> TIP 4: Don't 'kill -9' the postmaster
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