Exclude certain columns from SHOW COLUMNS mysql

Question

I have this query: SHOW COLUMNS FROM mash which works fine in my while loop for building a select element made from table column names. But in my table i have "id" and "tstamp" which i dont want in the select element, is this possible to exclude these columns?

echo "<form action='".$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']."' method='get'>";
            connectDB();
            $result = mysql_query("SHOW COLUMNS FROM mash") or die(mysql_error());
            echo '<select name="column" class="column">';
            while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result)) {
                echo "<option value='".$row[0]."'>".ucwords($row[0])."</option>";
            }
            closeConn();
            echo '</select>';
echo "</form>";

Answer 1

PHP Way:

Use a continue in the while loop, when those fields are fetched, like this:

echo "<form action='".$_SERVER['PHP_SELF']."' method='get'>";
    connectDB();
    $result = mysql_query("SHOW COLUMNS FROM mash") or die(mysql_error());
    echo '<select name="column" class="column">';
    while ($row = mysql_fetch_array($result))
    {
        if($row[0] == 'id' || $row[0] == 'tstamp')
              continue;
        echo "<option value='".$row[0]."'>".ucwords($row[0])."</option>";
    }
    closeConn();
    echo '</select>';
echo "</form>";

This will just skip the id and tstamp fields and process all others. continue is used within looping structures to skip the rest of the current loop iteration and continue execution at the condition evaluation and then the beginning of the next iteration.

---

MySQL Way:

Remove those fields in the query like this:

SHOW COLUMNS FROM mash WHERE Field NOT IN ('id', 'tstamp');