There are times when your code has to add/remove columns dynamically to/from a mysql table. And there are many other programming situations where you need to check if the field exists in a mysql table column list or just get the column set for further use.

There are several methods of doing this but I will cover just one right now: the easy one. This easy one does not rely on a mysql query but a fake query. The others I know are:

1. DESCRIBE [SCHEMA.]TABLE (schema is optional) and will return a set of results with the table columns and information about each of them.
2. A SELECT query against INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS using TABLE_NAME and TABLE_SCHEMA requesting COLUMN_NAME.
   This method requires you to know the current selected database (SELECT DATABASE() LIMIT 1) which adds another query to the magic.

List A MySQL Table Column Set

Maybe there are other methods but this is my version of the magic and I do consider it the most simple.

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Basic ... huh? No data is returned but a set of columns returned by a resultsless query.