Truncate all tables in a MySQL database in one command?

Question

Is there a query (command) to truncate all the tables in a database in one operation? I want to know if I can do this with one single query.

Answer 1

Drop (i.e. remove tables)

mysql -Nse 'show tables' DATABASE_NAME | while read table; do mysql -e "drop table $table" DATABASE_NAME; done

Truncate (i.e. empty tables)

mysql -Nse 'show tables' DATABASE_NAME | while read table; do mysql -e "truncate table $table" DATABASE_NAME; done

Answer 2

The following query will generate a list of individual truncate commands for all database tables in a Mysql schema(s). (Replace dbSchemaName1 with name of your Db schema.)

SELECT CONCAT('TRUNCATE TABLE ',table_schema,'.',TABLE_NAME, ';') 
    FROM INFORMATION_SCHEMA.TABLES WHERE table_schema IN ('dbSchemaName1','dbSchemaName2');

Copy the query results (which might look like the following) and paste the list of truncate commands into a SQL query tab in MySQL Worbench or your query command tool of choice:

TRUNCATE TABLE dbSchemaName1.table1;
TRUNCATE TABLE dbSchemaName1.table2;
TRUNCATE TABLE dbSchemaName1.table3;

Note: you may receive the following error:

ERROR 1217 (23000): Cannot delete or update a parent row: a foreign key constraint fails

This occurs if there are tables with foreign keys references to the table you are trying to drop/truncate.

To resolve this turn off foreign key checks before running the truncate commands:

SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=0;  -- turn off foreign key checks
TRUNCATE TABLE dbSchemaName1.table1;  -- truncate tables
TRUNCATE TABLE dbSchemaName1.table2;
TRUNCATE TABLE dbSchemaName1.table3;
SET FOREIGN_KEY_CHECKS=1;  -- turn on foreign key checks