When a client executes a statement that produces a result set, MySQL by default makes available both the data the result set contains, and result set metadata that provides information about the result set data. Metadata is contained in the MYSQL_FIELD structure (see Section 28.7.5, “C API Data Structures”), which is returned by the mysql_fetch_field(), mysql_fetch_field_direct(), and mysql_fetch_fields() functions.

Clients can indicate on a per-connection basis that result set metadata is optional and that the client will indicate to the server whether to return it. Suppression of metadata transfer can improve performance, particularly for sessions that execute many queries that return few rows each.

There are two ways to indicate that result set metadata is optional for a connection. They are equivalent, so either one suffices:

For metadata-optional connections, the client sets the resultset_metadata system variable to control whether the server returns result set metadata. Permitted values are FULL (return all metadata; this is the default) and NONE (return no metadata).

For metadata-optional connections, the mysql_fetch_field(), mysql_fetch_field_direct(), and mysql_fetch_fields() functions return NULL when the resultset_metadata system variable is set to NONE.

To check whether a result set has metadata, use the mysql_result_metadata() function. This function returns RESULTSET_METADATA_FULL or RESULTSET_METADATA_NONE to indicate that the result set has full metadata or no metadata, respectively.

mysql_result_metadata() can be useful if the client does not know in advance whether a result set has metadata. For example, if a client executes a stored procedure that returns multiple result sets and might change the resultset_metadata system variable, the client can invoke mysql_result_metadata() for each result set to determine whether it has metadata.

For connections that are not metadata-optional, setting resultset_metadata to NONE produces an error.