First thing first, if you would like to play along with this tutorial, here is a code block to create a database and table:

create database sandbox;

use sandbox;
CREATE TABLE employee_id (
        emp_nm varchar(30) not null,
        emp_id varchar(8),
        b_emp_id varchar(8),
        PRIMARY KEY(emp_nm) );             

To check if a table exists in MySql, you can use the INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES table.

Running the following code, produces the results below:

Select *
from INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
where table_schema = 'Sandbox';

SELECT IF( EXISTS(
             SELECT *
             FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES
           WHERE TABLE_NAME = 'employee_id'), 1, 0);

And if I try it with a table name that does not exist:

One of the more common uses I find for this when I need to create a table in a script. I want to make sure a table with same name doesn’t already exist, or my query will fail. So I write a query like the one below.

drop table if exists employee_id;

 CREATE TABLE employee_id (
        emp_nm varchar(30) not null,
             emp_id varchar(8),
             b_emp_id varchar(8),
             PRIMARY KEY(emp_nm) );

INSERT INTO employee_id
       (emp_nm, emp_id)
VALUES
       ('Bob', 'A1234567'),
       ('Lisa', 'A1234568'),
       ('Priyanka', 'B1234567');