How to drop all tables from the database with manage.py CLI in Django?

Question

How can I drop all tables from a database using manage.py and command line? Is there any way to do that executing manage.py with appropriate parameters so I can execute it f

Answer 1

Here's a south migration version of @peter-g's answer. I often fiddle with raw sql, so this comes in handy as 0001_initial.py for any befuddled apps. It will only work on DBs that support SHOW TABLES (like mysql). Substitute something like SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.tables WHERE table_schema = 'public'; if you use PostgreSQL. Also, I often do this exact same thing for both the forwards and backwards migrations.

from south.db import db
from south.v2 import SchemaMigration
from django.db.utils import DatabaseError
from os import path
from logging import getLogger
logger = getLogger(__name__)


class Migration(SchemaMigration):

    def forwards(self, orm):

        app_name = path.basename(path.split(path.split(path.abspath(__file__))[0])[0])
        table_tuples = db.execute(r"SHOW TABLES;")

        for tt in table_tuples:
            table = tt[0]
            if not table.startswith(app_name + '_'):
                continue
            try:
                logger.warn('Deleting db table %s ...' % table)
                db.delete_table(table)
            except DatabaseError:
                from traceback import format_exc
                logger.error("Error running %s: \n %s" % (repr(self.forwards), format_exc()))

Coworker/cocoders would kill me if they knew I did this, though.