How do you get a schema report from SHP, PostGIS, or other file type?

Question

All,

We're loading City and County data into our database, but looking to remove several fields we don't use.

Those fields we do use I'd like our users to simply highlight on a printout I give them based on a schema report from the .SHP we're getting the data from.

Is there a way to get a list of the fields in a SHP or PostGIS layer in a format such as a spreadsheet I can print off and give to users?

Answer 1

You can query your database's information schema using pgAdmin to get a list of columns in a particular table, then copy-paste the results into a spreadsheet to distribute. Here's an example of one kind of report you can get:

SELECT column_name, data_type, character_maximum_length
  FROM information_schema.columns 
  WHERE table_schema = 'mySchema'
  AND table_name = 'myTable'
  ORDER BY ordinal_position