First, understand exactly what data you want to retrieve. Then look at the database schema to find out which tables the database contains, and which columns the tables contain.
The following query returns a result set of every column of every table in the database:
SELECT table_name, column_name
FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.COLUMNS;
In this sqlfiddle, it returns the following result set (truncated here for brevity):
TABLE_NAME COLUMN_NAME
-----------------------
CHARACTER_SETS CHARACTER_SET_NAME
CHARACTER_SETS DEFAULT_COLLATE_NAME
CHARACTER_SETS DESCRIPTION
CHARACTER_SETS MAXLEN
COLLATIONS COLLATION_NAME
COLLATIONS CHARACTER_SET_NAME
COLLATIONS ID
COLLATIONS IS_DEFAULT
COLLATIONS IS_COMPILED
COLLATIONS SORTLEN
Now I know that I can select the column CHARACTER_SET_NAME from the table CHARACTER_SETS like this:
SELECT CHARACTER_SET_NAME
FROM CHARACTER_SETS;
Use mysqli::query to execute these queries.