Conditions may arise during stored program execution that require special handling, such as exiting the current program block or continuing execution. Handlers can be defined for general conditions such as warnings or exceptions, or for specific conditions such as a particular error code. Specific conditions can be assigned names and referred to that way in handlers.

To name a condition, use the DECLARE ... CONDITION statement. To declare a handler, use the DECLARE ... HANDLER statement. See Section 13.6.7.1, “DECLARE ... CONDITION Syntax”, and Section 13.6.7.2, “DECLARE ... HANDLER Syntax”. For information about how the server chooses handlers when a condition occurs, see Section 13.6.7.6, “Scope Rules for Handlers”.

To raise a condition, use the SIGNAL statement. To modify condition information within a condition handler, use RESIGNAL. See Section 13.6.7.1, “DECLARE ... CONDITION Syntax”, and Section 13.6.7.2, “DECLARE ... HANDLER Syntax”.

To retrieve information from the diagnostics area, use the GET DIAGNOSTICS statement (see Section 13.6.7.3, “GET DIAGNOSTICS Syntax”). For information about the diagnostics area, see Section 13.6.7.7, “The MySQL Diagnostics Area”.