Check if table exists in SQL Server

Question

I would like this to be the ultimate discussion on how to check if a table exists in SQL Server 2000/2005 using SQL Statements.

When you Google for the answer, you get so many different answers. Is there an official/backward and forward compatible way of doing it?

Here are two possible ways of doing it. Which one among the two is the standard/best way of doing it?

First way:

IF EXISTS (SELECT 1 
           FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES 
           WHERE TABLE_TYPE='BASE TABLE' 
           AND TABLE_NAME='mytablename') 
   SELECT 1 AS res ELSE SELECT 0 AS res;

Second way:

IF OBJECT_ID (N'mytablename', N'U') IS NOT NULL 
   SELECT 1 AS res ELSE SELECT 0 AS res;

MySQL provides the simple

SHOW TABLES LIKE '%tablename%'; 

statement. I am looking for something similar.

Answer 1

IF EXISTS 
(
    SELECT  * 

    FROM    INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES 

    WHERE   TABLE_SCHEMA = 'PutSchemaHere'     
            AND  
            TABLE_NAME   = 'PutTableNameHere'
)

Answer 2

Something important to know for anybody who hasn't found their solution yet: SQL server != MYSQL. If you want to do it with MYSQL, it is quite simple

    $sql = "SELECT 1 FROM `db_name`.`table_name` LIMIT 1;";
    $result = mysql_query($sql);
    if( $result == false )
        echo "table DOES NOT EXIST";
    else
        echo "table exists";

Posting this here because it's the top hit at Google.

Answer 3

    IF OBJECT_ID (N'dbo.T', N'U') IS NOT NULL 
      BEGIN 
          print 'deleted table';
          drop table t 
      END
    else 
      begin 
          print 'table not found' 
      end

Create table t (id int identity(1,1) not null, name varchar(30) not null, lastname varchar(25) null)
insert into t( name, lastname) values('john','doe');
insert into t( name, lastname) values('rose',NULL);

Select * from t
1   john    doe
2   rose    NULL

-- clean
drop table t

Answer 4

---

-- -- create procedure to check if a table exists

---

DELIMITER $$

DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS `checkIfTableExists`;

CREATE PROCEDURE checkIfTableExists(
    IN databaseName CHAR(255),
    IN tableName CHAR(255),
    OUT boolExistsOrNot CHAR(40)
)

  BEGIN
      SELECT count(*) INTO boolExistsOrNot FROM information_schema.TABLES
      WHERE (TABLE_SCHEMA = databaseName)
      AND (TABLE_NAME = tableName);
  END $$

DELIMITER ;

---

-- -- how to use : check if table migrations exists

---

 CALL checkIfTableExists('muDbName', 'migrations', @output);