How to delete all collections and documents in ArangoDb

Question

I am trying to put together a unit test setup with Arango. For that I need to be able to reset the test database around every test.

I know we can directly delete a database from the REST API but it is mentioned in the documentation that creation and deletion can "take a while".

Would that be the recommended way to do that kind of setup or is there an AQL statement to do something similar ?

Answer 1

After some struggling with similar need I have found this solution:

for (let col of db._collections()) {

    if (!col.properties().isSystem) {
        db._drop(col._name);
    }
}

Answer 2

You can for example retrieve the list of all collections (excluding system ones) and drop or truncate them. The latter will remove all documents and keep indexes. Alternatively you can use AQL REMOVE statement.