Select queries

Selecting all data

To select absolutely all the data in the table, we would do

SELECT *
FROM users;

This whole statement is called a query.

The * character in SQL is used as a wildcard, and here we use it to say give me every column from the table.

TIP

The line break after SELECT * is optional. We often put line breaks in SQL for readability, but they're not necessary. The same is true for uppercase key words.

select * from users;

This is fine.

Selecting specific columns

Usually, we want to restrict our search to just the columns we need, especially if we have a very wide table. To do that, we replace the * with the names of the columns we want.

SELECT username, verified
FROM users;