Check if mysql table exists

I use activerecord to connect to mysql database and to create a table after connection. While it works fine, the problem is that I don't know how to check if the table exists. I thought this would work with table.exist? but somehow I don’t ... ... So this is what I got so far:

ActiveRecord::Base.establish_connection(
        :adapter => "mysql",
        :host => "localhost",
        :username => "my-username",
        :password => "my-password",
        :database => "my-db",
        :encoding => "UTF8"
    )

    # How to check if it exists already? table_name.table.exist? doesnt really work...
    name = "my_table"
if name.!table.exist?
    ActiveRecord::Schema.define do
        create_table :"#{name}" do |table|
            table.column :foo, :string
            table.column :bar, :string
        end
    end
else
puts "Table exist already..."
end
    # Create ActiveRecord object for the mysql table
    class Table < ActiveRecord::Base
        set_table_name "#{name}"
    end