The built in function does not provide any support for selecting a schema. If you need schema support and do not want to alter your SEARCH_PATH, the following function can provide it:
function meta_data($table, $schema = 'public')
{
$result = pg_query_params("SELECT a.attname, a.attnum, t.typname, a.attlen, a.attnotNULL, a.atthasdef, a.attndims
FROM pg_class as c, pg_attribute a, pg_type t, pg_namespace n
WHERE a.attnum > 0
AND a.attrelid = c.oid
AND c.relname = $1
AND a.atttypid = t.oid
AND n.oid = c.relnamespace
AND n.nspname = $2
ORDER BY a.attnum", array($table, $schema));
$fields = array();
while($row = pg_fetch_array()) {
$fields['attname'] = $row;
}
return $fields;
}