How to export / dump a MySql table into a text file including the field names (aka headers or column names)

Question

In MySql's interpreter, it's very easy to dump a table to the screen along with its field names.

There seems to be no simple way to export a table to a tab-delimted or CSV outfile including its column headers.

I'm trying to do this using only SQL or the Linux command line, without writing a program in another language.

Thank you

Answer 1

Piping the query to the commandline client outputs a tab separated list with the column names as the first line

$ echo "select * from surveys limit 5" | mysql -uroot -pGandalf surveys
phone   param1  param2  param3  param4  p0      p1      p2      p3      audio4  code    time
XXXXXXXXX       2008-07-02      11:17:23        XXXXXXXX        SAT     -       -       -       -       -       ERROR   2008-07-02 12:18:32
XXXXXXXXX       2008-07-02      11:22:52        XXXXXXXX        SAT     -       -       -       -       -       COLGADO 2008-07-02 12:04:29
XXXXXXXXX       2008-07-02      11:41:29        XXXXXXXX        SAT     -       -       -       -       -       COLGADO 2008-07-02 12:07:22
XXXXXXXXX       2008-07-02      12:16:19        XXXXXXXX        SAT     1       1       1       9       XXXXXXXXX_4.wav     OK      2008-07-02 16:14:27
XXXXXXXXX       2008-07-02      08:21:25        XXXXXXXX        SAT     1       1       1       1       XXXXXXXXX_4.wav     OK      2008-07-02 12:29:40

Answer 2

This little script should do it:

-- 1. choose the table and the output file here / this should be the only input

select 'mytable' into @tableName;
select 'c://temp/test.csv' into @outputFile;

-- 2. get the column names in a format that will fit the query

select group_concat(concat("'",column_name, "'")) into @columnNames from information_schema.columns
where table_name=@tableName;

-- 3. build the query

SET @query = CONCAT(
"select * from
((SELECT ",@columnNames,")
UNION
(SELECT * FROM `",@tableName,"`)) as a
INTO OUTFILE '", @outputFile, "'");

-- 4. execute the query

PREPARE stmt FROM @query;
EXECUTE stmt;