constraints - How do I detect if a table exist? MySql

Question

I was suggested to do this

SELECT table_schema, table_name FROM information_schema.tables
WHERE table_schema = 'mydb' AND table_name='ApprovePost';

However it is not reliable and cause me errors on several versions of mysql on windows and linux.

Maybe there is another way. Does anyone know?

This issue is I can do create table if not exists but I do a second pass to add the FK constraint. In my SQL dump I see > 130 contains on a single table. The table only has 6 columns, only two of these need constrains. The constrains keep building and building every time I restart the Apache server or whenever mono feels the need to call my global init method in my webapp.

Answer 1

Looks like you need to use the FLUSH TABLES command for the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES to reflect existing tables.

Reference:

• TABLE CACHE