TalkPHP - Empty a DB?

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obolus

03-02-2008 01:28 AM

Empty a DB?

Is there a way to empty a DB without having direct access (ie phpMyAdmin)? I searched the MySQL reference documentation and couldn't find (or maybe I missed it?) what I was looking for.

SOCK	03-02-2008 01:35 AM

The best method, IMHO, is to use TRUNCATE (similar to DELETE on all records, but resets the table as well).

I don't know what you mean by 'direct access'. If you don't have 'direct access' one way or another (PHP script, phpMyAdmin, mysql command line client) then how else would you perform a query?

Wildhoney

03-02-2008 01:50 AM

I think he means via a query and not the MySQL application via command line. If I'm right then SOCK is right with TRUNCATE :-) !

SOCK	03-02-2008 02:33 AM

Ok, well as long as the connecting user has DELETE permissions, TRUNCATE will work from a PHP script.

MySQL Manual : TRUNCATE

obolus

03-02-2008 09:06 PM

I don't want to empty all of the existing tables, I want to get rid of every existing table in the database.

Thanks for replies.

Alan @ CIT

03-02-2008 09:25 PM

How many tables do you have? You could just use DROP TABLE (MySQL :: MySQL 5.1 Reference Manual :: 12.1.16 DROP TABLE Syntax) on each one.

PHP Code:


		
			
mysql_query("DROP TABLE foo");

mysql_query("DROP TABLE bar");

// ...

Might take a while if you have thousands of tables though :-)

Alan

SOCK	03-02-2008 10:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by obolus (Post 11805)

Is there a way to empty a DB...

Quote:

Originally Posted by obolus (Post 11805)

I don't want to empty all of the existing tables, I want to get rid of every existing table in the database.

Most of the time when forum posts request info on "how to do this with a database", they're referring to the table, not the actual database. I naturally assumed you wanted to empty the table, not DROP all tables from the database.

You can use the command line tool 'mysqladmin' to drop all tables in a comma delimited list, I believe. If you could create a system exec() statement that called this function with those parameters it might be easier to do that several calls to mysql_query() to drop the table(s) (depending on how many you have).

The other way to look at it, if you have the privilege to do so, just make one call to

Code:

DROP DATABASE databasename;

obolus

03-02-2008 11:26 PM

aye, sorry for the confusion, sock. I'm pretty sure I dont have the perms to be able to drop/delete an entire database.

Alan- that answers my question to a degree, but- the problem, and my fault for not bringing this up in my original post, is that I don't know all of the table names/prefixes in the db.

So, is it possible to drop all tables in the DB with something along the lines of this:

Quote:

DROP * FROM dbname

Quote:

DROP TABLE * FROM dbname

..?

Thanks for help so far!

Salathe

03-02-2008 11:32 PM

Just DROP the database. If you don't have permissions, get them.

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