title: Get existing table using SQLAlchemy MetaData
body: <p>I have a table that already exists:</p>
  
  <pre><code>USERS_TABLE = Table("users", META_DATA,
                      Column("id", Integer, Sequence("user_id_seq"), primary_key=True),
                      Column("first_name", String(255)),
                      Column("last_name", String(255))
                     )
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>I created this table by running this:</p>
  
  <pre><code>CONN = create_engine(DB_URL, client_encoding="UTF-8")
  META_DATA = MetaData(bind=CONN, reflect=True)
  # ... table code
  META_DATA.create_all(CONN, checkfirst=True)
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>the first time it worked and I was able to create the table. However, the 2nd time around I got this error:</p>
  
  <pre><code>sqlalchemy.exc.InvalidRequestError: Table 'users' is already defined for this MetaData instance.  Specify 'extend_existing=True' to redefine options and columns on an existing Table object.
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>which makes sense since the table <code>users</code> already exists. I'm able to see if the table exists like so:</p>
  
  <pre><code>TABLE_EXISTS = CONN.dialect.has_table(CONN, "users")
  </code></pre>
  
  <p>However, how do I actually get the existing table object? I can't find this anywhere in the documentation. Please help.</p>