PHP MySQL - ALTER to drop Column

Let’s discuss how to drop column from an existing table in MYSQL through PHP  in the XAMPP Server.

Consider the table - Medicine present in the database - hospital snapshot with the following structure:

 

 

We can see that there are only SIX columns.

ALTER in MySQL is used to add.drop and change the datatype of the column in a table.

 

SQL ALTER DROP COLUMN - Syntax

 

ALTER TABLE TABLE_NAME DROP COLUMN name_of_the_column;

name_of_the_column refers to the column name to be removed from the table.

 

Approach-

1.Specify the credentials to create a connection object.
The credentials include XAMPP Server localhost name, username, password and database name.
$connecting_data =  new mysqli($server, $user, $pwd, $data);

2.Specify the SQL Query that includes the ALTER
$my_query = ALTER TABLE TABLE_NAME DROP COLUMN name_of_the_column;

3.Check if the column is removed or not.
if ($connecting_data->query($my_query) === TRUE) {
  echo "Column dropped Succesfully!!.";
} else {
  echo "Error: " . $connecting_data->error;
}

4. Close the Connection.
$connecting_data->close();

Example 1:

Let's drop the Number column from the Medicine table.

<?php

// Specify the server
$server = "localhost";

// Specify the user
$user = "root";

// Specify the password
$pwd = "";

// Specify the database 
$data = "hospital";

// Let's create connection by using the above details
$connecting_data =  new mysqli($server, $user, $pwd, $data);

$my_query = "ALTER TABLE Medicine DROP COLUMN Number;";


if ($connecting_data->query($my_query) === TRUE) {
  echo "Number column dropped Succesfully!!.";
} else {
  echo "Error: " . $connecting_data->error;
}

$connecting_data->close();
?>

Output:

So the column - Number is removed. let's check in xampp server.

 

 

Number column is now not available.

 

Example 2:

Let's drop the Address column from the Medicine table.

<?php

// Specify the server
$server = "localhost";

// Specify the user
$user = "root";

// Specify the password
$pwd = "";

// Specify the database 
$data = "hospital";

// Let's create connection by using the above details
$connecting_data =  new mysqli($server, $user, $pwd, $data);

$my_query = "ALTER TABLE Medicine DROP COLUMN Address;";


if ($connecting_data->query($my_query) === TRUE) {
  echo "Address column dropped Succesfully!!.";
} else {
  echo "Error: " . $connecting_data->error;
}

$connecting_data->close();
?>

Output:

So the column - Address is removed. let's check in xampp server.

 

 

Address column is now not available.

 

Conclusion

In this article we seen how to remove/drop the existing  column using ALTER command in PHP-MySQL in XAMPP Server.