Checking if MySQL Tables Exist and if not create them

What would be the best way to check if tables exist in a MySQL DB? I was looking at a few code examples and have seen it done a couple of ways.

What I am trying to do is create tables like tag_tagnamehere so each tag has their own table with a link to the post/page ID.

So what I'm thinking is when people inset a list of TAGS I would loop through them and if the table is not found, 开发者_如何学编程create it and make and entry to that post/page ID.

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CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS

Maybe I didn't understand your design/table structure, although each tag shouldn't reside in its own table. You should have a table of tags, and a normalised scenario where other tables (if need be) define other tag attributes

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Create table has that built in.

Create table Foo if not exists

But you probably shouldn't do this. Note how its done here with a PostTag table

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CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS <table_name>...

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How about directly from a MySQL Query?

CREATE TABLE someTable IF NOT EXISTS