MySQL DROP all tables, ignoring foreign keys

Question

Is there a nice easy way to drop all tables from a MySQL database, ignoring any foreign key constraints that may be in there?

Answer 1

From this answer,

execute:

  use `dbName`; --your db name here
  SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 0; 
  SET @tables = NULL;
  SET GROUP_CONCAT_MAX_LEN=32768;

  SELECT GROUP_CONCAT('`', table_schema, '`.`', table_name, '`') INTO @tables
  FROM   information_schema.tables 
  WHERE  table_schema = (SELECT DATABASE());
  SELECT IFNULL(@tables, '') INTO @tables;

  SET        @tables = CONCAT('DROP TABLE IF EXISTS ', @tables);
  PREPARE    stmt FROM @tables;
  EXECUTE    stmt;
  DEALLOCATE PREPARE stmt;
  SET        FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS = 1;

This drops tables from the database currently in use. You can set current database using use.

---

Or otherwise, Dion's accepted answer is simpler, except you need to execute it twice, first to get the query, and second to execute the query. I provided some silly back-ticks to escape special characters in db and table names.

  SELECT CONCAT('DROP TABLE IF EXISTS `', table_schema, '`.`', table_name, '`;')
  FROM   information_schema.tables
  WHERE  table_schema = 'dbName'; --your db name here