How to get/generate the create statement for an existing hive table?

Steps to generate Create table DDLs for all the tables in the Hive database and export into text file to run later:

step 1)
create a .sh file with the below content, say hive_table_ddl.sh

#!/bin/bash
rm -f tableNames.txt
rm -f HiveTableDDL.txt
hive -e "use $1; show tables;" > tableNames.txt  
wait
cat tableNames.txt |while read LINE
   do
   hive -e "use $1;show create table $LINE;" >>HiveTableDDL.txt
   echo  -e "\n" >> HiveTableDDL.txt
   done
rm -f tableNames.txt
echo "Table DDL generated"

step 2)

Run the above shell script by passing 'db name' as paramanter

>bash hive_table_dd.sh <<databasename>>

output :

All the create table statements of your DB will be written into the HiveTableDDL.txt

As of Hive 0.10 this patch-967 implements SHOW CREATE TABLE which "shows the CREATE TABLE statement that creates a given table, or the CREATE VIEW statement that creates a given view."

Usage:

SHOW CREATE TABLE myTable;

Describe Formatted/Extended will show the data definition of the table in hive

hive> describe Formatted dbname.tablename;