Output identical fields names of two LEFT JOIN tables Sql - sql

Question

I have two tables, with about 20 columns each
users:
id_user user ..... status token
----------------------------------
2 A 0 XdAQ
posts:
id_user post ..... status token
-------------------------------------
3 hi 1 sDyTMl
Query:
SELECT u.*,p.*
FROM posts as p
LEFT JOIN users as u ON u.id_user = p.id_user
WHERE p.id_post = 3
LIMIT 1
So in Php, it could be retrieved any value
....
$status=$a['status'];
$token=$a['token'];
I want to return all the fields of each table to make the post content, the problem is that there is conflict among those identical column names in each table. there are more than 20 columns in each in my real tables, so writing the column names with aliases I think is not the way to go. Is there a way to alias only those identical columns in conflict?

Answer 1

You really should list the specific columns that you want. This is the safest way to retrieve values from the table.
If the only column that is in common is the one used for the join, you can use the USING clause:
SELECT *
FROM posts p LEFT JOIN
users as u
USING (id_user)
WHERE p.id_post = 3
LIMIT 1;
The USING clause is ANSI standard, but not all databases support it. When you use it, only one version of id_post is in the columns returned by the SELECT *. In a LEFT JOIN, it is the version with a value.
If you have other columns with the same name, you need to use column aliases. One short-cut is to take all columns from one table and name the columns in the other:
SELECT u.*, p.col1 as p_col1, . . .
FROM posts p LEFT JOIN
users as u
USING (id_user)
WHERE p.id_post = 3
LIMIT 1;