How can I drop all the views from a MYSQL Database? - mysql

Question

My database had lots of views and it was impossible to drop them one by one.
I would like to just drop them all because the database doesn't refresh structure changes of the tables in the view that select from them.

Answer 1

If you want to do this in the MySQL client, you can dynamically generate the DDL statements using information_schema, dump them to a SQL script, and then execute that script.
Example:
select concat('drop view ',table_schema,'.',table_name,';') as ddl
into outfile '/tmp/drop_all_views.sql'
from information_schema.views
where table_schema = 'your_schema';
\. /tmp/drop_all_views.sql

Answer 2

After searching on the web, I found a shell script to drop all tables here: http://www.cyberciti.biz/faq/how-do-i-empty-mysql-database/
Then, I changed that script to drop all views of the database.
This is the final result:
#!/bin/bash
PREFIX=""
SUFFIX=""
HOST="localhost"
PORT="3306"
while getopts p:s:h:P: OPCAO; do
case "${OPCAO}" in
p) PREFIX="${OPTARG}" ;;
s) SUFFIX="${OPTARG}" ;;
h) HOST="${OPTARG}" ;;
P) PORT="${OPTARG}" ;;
esac
done
shift $((OPTIND-1))
MUSER="$1"
MPASS="$2"
MDB="$3"
# Detect paths
MYSQL=$(which mysql)
AWK=$(which awk)
GREP=$(which grep)
if [ $# -eq 0 ]
then
echo "Usage: $0 [-h Host] [-P Port] [-p Prefix-View-Name] [-s Suffix-View-Name] {MySQL-User-Name} {MySQL-User-Password} {MySQL-Database-Name}"
echo "Drops all views from a MySQL"
exit 1
fi
TABLES=$($MYSQL -h $HOST -P $PORT -u $MUSER -p$MPASS $MDB -e "SELECT table_name FROM information_schema.views WHERE table_schema = '$MDB' AND table_name LIKE '$PREFIX%$SUFFIX';" | $AWK '{ print $1}')
for t in $TABLES
do
echo "Deleting $t view from $MDB database..."
$MYSQL -h $HOST -P $PORT -u $MUSER -p$MPASS $MDB -e "drop view $t"
done
This solution will work just for who uses Unix-like systems.
To call the script, I used:
./script.sh [-h host] [-P port] [-p prefixViewName] [-s suffixViewName] username password databaseName
EDIT: I improved the script to accept option parameters, like the host, port and also a prefix and a suffix to filter what views will be dropped.