[EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote:
> I am trying to discover the schema of a PostgreSQL database
> programatically at runtime.
>
> I'm using psycopg (I assume that's still the best library). Is there a
> way to query the schema other than opening a system pipe like "psql -d
> '\d'", "psql -d '\d tablename'", etc.?
>
> DBIAPI 2.0 shows that the Cursor object has a .description method that
> describes rows, and there's the Type object. But neither of these
> appear to give you table names.
>
> Is there something else I should look at?
Yes, but as with so many of these things you'll have to accept it's a
platform-specific (i.e. non-portable) solution, and it requires that you
are running PostgreSQL 7.4 or higher. Under those circumstances you can
query the metadata through the information schema.
>>> import psycopg2 as db
>>> conn = db.connect('dbname=billings user=steve password=xxxxx
port=5432')
>>> curs = conn.cursor()
>>> curs.execute("""select table_name from information_schema.tables
... WHERE table_schema='public' AND table_type='BASE
TABLE'""")
>>> curs.fetchall()
[('contacts',), ('invoicing',), ('lines',), ('task',), ('products',),
('project'
,)]
>>>
regards
Steve
--
Steve Holden +44 150 684 7255 +1 800 494 3119
Holden Web LLC www.holdenweb.com
PyCon TX 2006 www.python.org/pycon/
--
http://mail.python.org/mailman/listinfo/python-list
