How to give a database as an input in a perl script?

[amature]

Dear Monks!

I have written a perl script which reads a whole directory and takes all the files in a directory as input. Now instead of giving a directory as a input, i want to give a database as a input and it must read all the tables in the database like reading the files in a directory.

How can i do this please suggest me a way or an idea. I would be very grateful for the same.

Thanks ahead of time!

[GrandFather]

Something like:

use strict;
use warnings;
use DBI;

my $dbh = DBI->connect(...);
my $tables = $dbh->selectall_arrayref('show tables');

print "$_->[0]\n" for @$tables;

[Corion]

Instead of the (somewhat) database specific show tables, I prefer to offload that knowledge to the database driver. DBI has lots of Catalog Methods that return structured data about the database itself. Of course, some of it is implemented by issuing a show tables command.

[dsheroh]

Generic version:

use strict;
use warnings;
use DBI;

my $dbh = DBI->connect(...);
my @tables = $dbh->tables(undef, undef, undef, 'TABLE');

print "$_\n" for @tables;

The tables method should work for all databases supported by DBI. Sending a show tables query is MySQL-specific - I know it doesn't work with SQLite databases and, from long-gone memory, I'm pretty sure PostgreSQL wouldn't like it either. Any other database engine, I can only say "seems unlikely".

[amature]

@GrandFather Thanks now i have got some kind of idea

[choroba]

Crossposted at StackOverflow. It is considered polite to inform about crossposting so people not visiting both sites do not waste their time on a problem already solved at the alien site.