MySQL drop column is exists

Sometimes we need to drop column from a database, developers write script to drop the column by following:

ALTER TABLE <table>DROP COLUMN <column>

But if the column is already dropped from the database it will through a error as the column is no longer exist. We want to do is to drop a table or column, but only if it exists

Unfortunately there is an IF EXISTS clause for CREATE TABLE in MySQL but no one for ALTER TABLE ADD/DROP COLUMN.

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS <table>;

CREATE TABLE <table>

Solution : Creating following temporary stored procedure would resolve the problem in MySQL 5+:

delimiter // CREATE PROCEDURE drop_column_sp() BEGIN IF EXISTS( SELECT * FROM information_schema.COLUMNS WHERE table_name = '<table>' AND column_name = '<column>' and table_schema ='<schema>' ) THEN ALTER TABLE <table> DROP COLUMN <column>; END IF; END; // delimiter ';' CALL drop_column_sp(); DROP PROCEDURE drop_column_sp;