The “IF EXISTS” clause in MySQL is used to check if a table or view exists before performing any operation on it.
For example, when creating a new table, you can use the “IF NOT EXISTS” clause to ensure that the table is only created if it does not already exist:
CREATE TABLE IF NOT EXISTS customers (
id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL,
email VARCHAR(255) NOT NULL UNIQUE
);
Similarly, when dropping a table, you can use the “IF EXISTS” clause to avoid an error if the table does not exist:
DROP TABLE IF EXISTS customers;
