In SQLite, we can use the IF EXISTS clause of the DROP TABLE statement to check whether the table exists or not before dropping it.

Example

Here’s an example to demonstrate:

DROP TABLE IF EXISTS t1;

That statement drops a table called t1 if it exists.

When I ran that statement, the table already existed, and so it was dropped.

When I ran the statement again (after it had already been dropped), I didn’t get an error.

Here’s what happens when we don’t use IF EXISTS:

DROP TABLE t1;

Result:

Error: no such table: t1

This time we get an error telling us that the table doesn’t exist.

See SQLite DROP TABLE for a discussion on foreign keys and view dependencies when dropping tables in SQLite.

You can also run a query against the sqlite_master table if you just want to check if a table exists without dropping it.