MySQL via Command Line 102: Basic User Interaction
Pre-Flight Check
- These instructions are intended for deleting a MySQL database on Linux via the command line.
- I’ll be working from a Liquid Web Core Managed CentOS 7 server, and I’ll be logged in as root.
First, we’ll log in to the MySQL server from the command line with the following command:
mysql -u root -p
In this case, I’ve specified the user root with the -u flag and then used the -p flag so MySQL prompts for a password. Enter your current password to complete the login. If you need to change your root (or any other) password in the database, then follow this tutorial on changing a password for MySQL via the command line.
You should now be at a MySQL prompt that looks very similar to this:
mysql>
Follow this tutorial if you have not yet created a database, or you want a list of databases.
Delete a Database in MySQL
It only takes one simple command to delete a database in MySQL, but BEWARE; dropping a database can not be undone! The command is as follows:
DROP DATABASE tutorial_database;
If a database with the name tutorial_database does not exist, then you’ll receive this error:
ERROR 1008 (HY000): Can't drop database 'tutorial_database'; database doesn't exist
To avoid seeing this error use the following command instead:
DROP DATABASE IF EXISTS tutorial_database;
The above command will only drop the database tutorial_database if a database of that name exists.
View All MySQL Databases
To view a list of databases simply issue the following command:
SHOW DATABASES;
Your result should be similar to this:
mysql> SHOW DATABASES;
+--------------------+
| Database |
+--------------------+
| information_schema |
| mysql |
| test |
+--------------------+
4 rows in set (0.00 sec)
Video by Andrew Casares
