How do I remove all tables and not the schema in Postgresql?

Question

I have a schema assigned to my user (jason). I can't remove the schema as I don't have permissions to do so. Is there a nice way to remove each tables, data, everything in a schema and make it as if I had a freshly created schema. Basically the same effect as:

drop schema jason cascade;
create schema jason;

But without the actually dropping the schema.

I guess the best way would be to generate the list of DROP TABLE statements from the infomration_schema.tables and then run all them at once. — Ispirer SQLWays Migrations, Jul 14 '15 at 12:10

score 17 · Accepted Answer · edited Apr 03 '18 at 12:46

The accepted answer is great, but you can do this in just one step taking advantage from anonymous blocks (PosgreSQL 9.0+):

DO $$
DECLARE 
    r record;
BEGIN
    FOR r IN SELECT quote_ident(tablename) AS tablename, quote_ident(schemaname) AS schemaname FROM pg_tables WHERE schemaname = 'public'
    LOOP
        RAISE INFO 'Dropping table %.%', r.schemaname, r.tablename;
        EXECUTE format('DROP TABLE IF EXISTS %I.%I CASCADE', r.schemaname, r.tablename);
    END LOOP;
END$$;

Frank N Stein · Answer 2 · 2021-01-18T18:05:34.693

9

Try this from psql:

-- Turn off headers:
\t
-- Use SQL to build SQL:
select 'drop table if exists "' || tablename || '" cascade;' 
  from pg_tables
 where schemaname = 'jason'; 
-- If the output looks good, write it to a file and run it:
\g out.tmp
\i out.tmp

from stackoverflow.com/questions/3327312/drop-all-tables-in-postgresql

edited Jan 18 '21 at 18:05

answered Jul 14 '15 at 13:08

Frank N Stein

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I would also like to comment that this only creates the set of commands that you need to run after this to make delete the table. – Encompass Jul 17 '15 at 10:13
Yes and NO, yes create the command set and run they. – Frank N Stein Feb 02 '21 at 13:50
Alternative: use \gexec instead of \g & \i – Frank N Stein May 29 '23 at 15:02

How do I remove all tables and not the schema in Postgresql?

2 Answers2