A bash script to delete all tables from a MySQL database. Useful when your user connection has rights only at the table level, so dropping and recreating the database itself isn't an option.

empty-database.sh

#!/bin/bash
MUSER="$1"
MPASS="$2"
MDB="$3"
MHOST="$4"

# Detect paths
MYSQL=$(which mysql)
AWK=$(which awk)
GREP=$(which grep)

if [ $# -ne 4 ]
then
        echo "Usage: $0 {MySQL-User-Name} {MySQL-User-Password} {MySQL-Database-Name} {MySQL-Host}"
        echo "Drops all tables from a MySQL database"
        exit 1
fi

TABLES=$($MYSQL -h $MHOST -u $MUSER -p$MPASS $MDB -e 'show tables' | $AWK '{ print $1}' | $GREP -v '^Tables' )

for t in $TABLES
do
        echo "Deleting $t table from $MDB database..."
        $MYSQL -h $MHOST -u $MUSER -p$MPASS $MDB -e "drop table $t"
done