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MySQL/CREATE TABLE

Build Your First Real Table

Practical lesson

Let's build the students table piece by piece and confirm MySQL understood it correctly.

CREATE TABLE students ( ... ); opens the definition. Inside, id INT PRIMARY KEY says this column stores whole numbers and uniquely identifies each row no two rows can share the same id.

name VARCHAR(100) allows up to 100 characters of text per row, and age INT allows a whole number. Each column is separated by a comma, and the closing ) plus ; finish the statement.

Query OK, 0 rows affected confirms the table was created successfully "0 rows" simply means no data rows exist yet, since CREATE TABLE only builds the structure.

Running DESCRIBE students; afterward is how you check your work: it shows exactly the three columns you defined, their types, and confirms id is the PRI (primary) key. This read-it-back habit create, then describe is worth doing every time you build a new table.

Try it yourself
Code

Starter example

Code
CREATE TABLE students (
id INT PRIMARY KEY,
name VARCHAR(100),
age INT
);
DESCRIBE students;
Live preview
Query OK, 0 rows affected

+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+
| Field | Type         | Null | Key | Default |
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+
| id    | int          | NO   | PRI | NULL    |
| name  | varchar(100) | YES  |     | NULL    |
| age   | int          | YES  |     | NULL    |
+-------+--------------+------+-----+---------+
3 rows in set