MySQL Shell Commands

Motivation

I recently created a project and I happen to be using MySQL as my database provider. I haven't used MySQL in a while and when I was creating the schemas for the project a considerable amount of time was spent just familiarizing myself with MySQL and its commands all over again.

Recently, I took a small hiatus from interacting with the solution I was building and when I returned, I forgot all that I had researched. So I decided to curate a small list of the commands that I will inevitably forget once more. Next time it should only take about 5 minutes to get back up to speed.

The MySQL Shell

The shell is a command line interface which enables users to interact with the MySQL database. The MySQL shell can be launched by typing mysqlsh in the windows powershell. Once the shell is launched, a connection to a database must be established and then the user can execute various commands in the shell.

Useful Commands

• \sql
• \connect
• \quit
• SHOW
• USE
• CREATE

\sql

This switches the execution mode to sql.

\connect

The first thing we need to do is connect to our MySQL database. We use the \connect command and pass it a uri string with the connection details to accomplish this.

If you have MySQL Workbench you can right click on the database and click copy connection string to clipboard to retrieve it.

\connect "your-uri-string"

\quit

This command is used to exit the mysql shell.

SHOW

Once you are connected, you can use the show command to see the databases available to you.

SHOW DATABASES;

Once a database is selected you can once more use the SHOW command to display all the tables that have been created.

SHOW TABLES;

USE

In order to select a database, you use the USE command.

USE my_database;

CREATE

This is used to create a database or table. We will be using it to create a database.

CREATE DATABASE my_database;