Retrieve column names from java.sql.ResultSet

You can get this info from the ResultSet metadata. See ResultSetMetaData

e.g.

 ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT a, b, c FROM TABLE2");
 ResultSetMetaData rsmd = rs.getMetaData();
 String name = rsmd.getColumnName(1);

and you can get the column name from there. If you do

select x as y from table

then rsmd.getColumnLabel() will get you the retrieved label name too.

You can use the the ResultSetMetaData (http://java.sun.com/javase/6/docs/api/java/sql/ResultSetMetaData.html) object for that, like this:

ResultSet rs = stmt.executeQuery("SELECT * FROM table");
ResultSetMetaData rsmd = rs.getMetaData();
String firstColumnName = rsmd.getColumnName(1);

This question is old and so are the correct previous answers. But what I was looking for when I found this topic was something like this solution. Hopefully it helps someone.

// Loading required libraries    
import java.util.*;
import java.sql.*;

public class MySQLExample {
  public void run(String sql) {
    // JDBC driver name and database URL
    String JDBC_DRIVER = "com.mysql.jdbc.Driver";
    String DB_URL = "jdbc:mysql://localhost/demo";

    // Database credentials
    String USER = "someuser"; // Fake of course.
    String PASS = "somepass"; // This too!

    Statement stmt = null;
    ResultSet rs = null;
    Connection conn = null;
    Vector<String> columnNames = new Vector<String>();

    try {
      // Register JDBC driver
      Class.forName(JDBC_DRIVER);

      // Open a connection
      conn = DriverManager.getConnection(DB_URL, USER, PASS);

      // Execute SQL query
      stmt = conn.createStatement();
      rs = stmt.executeQuery(sql);
      if (rs != null) {
        ResultSetMetaData columns = rs.getMetaData();
        int i = 0;
        while (i < columns.getColumnCount()) {
          i++;
          System.out.print(columns.getColumnName(i) + "\t");
          columnNames.add(columns.getColumnName(i));
        }
        System.out.print("\n");

        while (rs.next()) {
          for (i = 0; i < columnNames.size(); i++) {
            System.out.print(rs.getString(columnNames.get(i))
                + "\t");

          }
          System.out.print("\n");
        }

      }
    } catch (Exception e) {
      System.out.println("Exception: " + e.toString());
    }

    finally {
      try {
        if (rs != null) {
          rs.close();
        }
        if (stmt != null) {
          stmt.close();
        }
        if (conn != null) {
          conn.close();
        }
      } catch (Exception mysqlEx) {
        System.out.println(mysqlEx.toString());
      }

    }
  }
}

while (rs.next()) {
   for (int j = 1; j < columncount; j++) {
       System.out.println( rsd.getColumnName(j) + "::" + rs.getString(j));      
   }
}

If you want to use spring jdbctemplate and don't want to deal with connection staff, you can use following:

jdbcTemplate.query("select * from books", new RowCallbackHandler() {
        public void processRow(ResultSet resultSet) throws SQLException {
            ResultSetMetaData rsmd = resultSet.getMetaData();
            for (int i = 1; i <= rsmd.getColumnCount(); i++ ) {
                String name = rsmd.getColumnName(i);
                // Do stuff with name
            }
        }
    });

U can get column name and value from resultSet.getMetaData(); This code work for me:

Connection conn = null;
PreparedStatement preparedStatement = null;
    try {
        Class.forName("com.mysql.cj.jdbc.Driver");
        conn = MySQLJDBCUtil.getConnection();
        preparedStatement = conn.prepareStatement(sql);
        if (params != null) {
            for (int i = 0; i < params.size(); i++) {
                preparedStatement.setObject(i + 1, params.get(i).getSqlValue());
            }
            ResultSet resultSet = preparedStatement.executeQuery();
            ResultSetMetaData md = resultSet.getMetaData();
            while (resultSet.next()) {
                int counter = md.getColumnCount();
                String colName[] = new String[counter];
                Map<String, Object> field = new HashMap<>();
                for (int loop = 1; loop <= counter; loop++) {
                    int index = loop - 1;
                    colName[index] = md.getColumnLabel(loop);
                    field.put(colName[index], resultSet.getObject(colName[index]));
                }
                rows.add(field);
            }
        }
    } catch (SQLException e) {
        e.printStackTrace();
    } finally {
        if (preparedStatement != null) {
            try {
                preparedStatement.close();
            }catch (Exception e1) {
                e1.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
        if (conn != null) {
            try {
                conn.close();
            } catch (SQLException e) {
                e.printStackTrace();
            }
        }
    }
    return rows;

I know, this question is already answered but probably somebody like me needs to access a column name from DatabaseMetaData by label instead of index:

ResultSet resultSet = null;
DatabaseMetaData metaData = null;

    try {
        metaData  = connection.getMetaData();
        resultSet = metaData.getColumns(null, null, tableName, null);

        while (resultSet.next()){
            String name = resultSet.getString("COLUMN_NAME");
        }
    }