How to return field type from MySQL query?

Question

Simple question: How can I return the field type of a MySQL table. I know about describe or show column but I just want to return that single parameter. e.g.:

SELECT fieldtype(mycol) FROM mytable
# should return INT or integer for example

Answer 1

You can use

SHOW FIELDS
FROM tableName where Field ='nameOfField'

This will return you result in format of

Field   Type    Null    Key     Default     Extra 

Answer 2

You can get this from the information_schema database:

select data_type 
from information_schema.columns 
where table_schema = 'myschema'
and table_name = 'mytable' 
and column_name = 'mycol'