[php] Check if MySQL table exists or not

Possible Duplicate:
MySQL check if a table exists without throwing an exception

I have a dynamic mysql query builder in my project that creates select queries from different tables.
I need to check if the current processing table exists or not.
Imagine that my tables are table1, table2, and table3. My code is something like this:

<?php
for($i = 1 ; $i <= 3 ; $i++) {
   $this_table = 'table'.$i;
   $query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM $this_table");
   // ...
}
?>

How can I do this check (Please tell me the simplest way).

You can try this

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM $this_table") or die (mysql_error());

or this

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM $this_table") or die ("Table does not exists!");

or this

$query = mysql_query("SELECT * FROM $this_table");

if(!$query)
   echo "The ".$this_table." does not exists";

Hope it helps!

$query = mysqli_query('SELECT TABLE_NAME FROM information_schema.TABLES WHERE TABLE_NAME IN ("table1","table2","table3") AND TABLE_SCHEMA="yourschema"');
$tablesExists = array();
while( null!==($row=mysqli_fetch_row($query)) ){
    $tablesExists[] = $row[0];
}

Use this query and then check the results.

$query = 'show tables like "test1"';

$result = mysql_query("SHOW TABLES FROM $dbname");

while($row = mysql_fetch_row($result)) 
{
    $arr[] = $row[0];
}

if(in_array($table,$arr))
{
  echo 'Table exists';
}

Taken from another post

$checktable = mysql_query("SHOW TABLES LIKE '$this_table'");
$table_exists = mysql_num_rows($checktable) > 0;

MySQL way:

SHOW TABLES LIKE 'pattern';

There's also a deprecated PHP function for listing all db tables, take a look at http://php.net/manual/en/function.mysql-list-tables.php

Checkout that link, there are plenty of useful insight on the comments over there.