How does one check if a table exists in an Android SQLite database?

Try this one:

public boolean isTableExists(String tableName, boolean openDb) {
    if(openDb) {
        if(mDatabase == null || !mDatabase.isOpen()) {
            mDatabase = getReadableDatabase();
        }

        if(!mDatabase.isReadOnly()) {
            mDatabase.close();
            mDatabase = getReadableDatabase();
        }
    }

    String query = "select DISTINCT tbl_name from sqlite_master where tbl_name = '"+tableName+"'";
    try (Cursor cursor = mDatabase.rawQuery(query, null)) {
        if(cursor!=null) {
            if(cursor.getCount()>0) {
                return true;
            }
        }
        return false;
    }
}

This is what I did:

/* open database, if doesn't exist, create it */
SQLiteDatabase mDatabase = openOrCreateDatabase("exampleDb.db", SQLiteDatabase.CREATE_IF_NECESSARY,null);

Cursor c = null;
boolean tableExists = false;
/* get cursor on it */
try
{
    c = mDatabase.query("tbl_example", null,
        null, null, null, null, null);
        tableExists = true;
}
catch (Exception e) {
    /* fail */
    Log.d(TAG, tblNameIn+" doesn't exist :(((");
}

return tableExists;

Although there are already a lot of good answers to this question, I came up with another solution that I think is more simple. Surround your query with a try block and the following catch:

catch (SQLiteException e){
    if (e.getMessage().contains("no such table")){
            Log.e(TAG, "Creating table " + TABLE_NAME + "because it doesn't exist!" );
            // create table
            // re-run query, etc.
    }
}

It worked for me!

I know nothing about the Android SQLite API, but if you're able to talk to it in SQL directly, you can do this:

create table if not exists mytable (col1 type, col2 type);

Which will ensure that the table is always created and not throw any errors if it already existed.