How to reset db in Django? I get a command 'reset' not found error

Question

Following this Django by Example tutotrial here: http://lightbird.net/dbe/todo_list.html

The tutorial says:

"This changes our table layout and we’ll have to ask Django to reset and recreate tables:

manage.py reset todo; manage.py syncdb"

though, when I run manage.py reset todo, I get the error:

$ python manage.py reset todo                                       
- Unknown command: 'reset'

Is this because I am using sqlite3 and not postgresql?

Can somebody tell me what the command is to reset the database?

The command: python manage.py sqlclear todo returns the error:

$ python manage.py sqlclear todo    
CommandError: App with label todo could not be found.    
Are you sure your INSTALLED_APPS setting is correct?

So I added 'todo' to my INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py, and ran python manage.py sqlclear todo again, resulting in this error:

$ python manage.py sqlclear todo                                      
- NameError: name 'admin' is not defined

Possible duplicate of What is the easiest way to clear a database from the CLI with manage.py in Django? — Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com
– Ciro Santilli OurBigBook.com, Commented May 13, 2016 at 21:39

robertklep · Accepted Answer · 2013-03-16 20:00:52Z

194

reset has been replaced by flush with Django 1.5, see:

python manage.py help flush

answered Mar 16, 2013 at 20:00

robertklep

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3 Comments

Andre Over a year ago

Unfortunately this does not work on individual apps like manage.py reset <appname> did. It results in an error: CommandError: Command doesn't accept any arguments

robertklep Over a year ago

Luckily, someone ported it back to 1.5 :)

Christoph Over a year ago

thanks, good to know, recent (last modified 6 months ago) public django documentation about fixtures still (2019-07-11) talks about 'reset': code.djangoproject.com/wiki/Fixtures

LisaD · Accepted Answer · 2018-10-03 16:22:32Z

42

It looks like the 'flush' answer will work for some, but not all cases. I needed not just to flush the values in the database, but to recreate the tables properly. I'm not using migrations yet (early days) so I really needed to drop all the tables.

Two ways I've found to drop all tables, both require something other than core django.

If you're on Heroku, drop all the tables with pg:reset:

heroku pg:reset DATABASE_URL
heroku run python manage.py syncdb

If you can install Django Extensions, it has a way to do a complete reset:

python ./manage.py reset_db --router=default

edited Oct 3, 2018 at 16:22

answered Aug 23, 2013 at 18:26

LisaD

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2 Comments

dev Over a year ago

@jonalv, you have to install django-extensions first.

Max Candocia Over a year ago

Also, you need to have it included under INSTALLED_APPS in settings.py.

Håken Lid · Accepted Answer · 2020-05-14 12:17:18Z

30

Similar to LisaD's answer, Django Extensions has a great reset_db command that totally drops everything, instead of just truncating the tables like "flush" does.

python ./manage.py reset_db

Merely flushing the tables wasn't fixing a persistent error that occurred when I was deleting objects. Doing a reset_db fixed the problem.

edited May 14, 2020 at 12:17

Håken Lid

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answered Aug 30, 2013 at 22:06

aendra

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1 Comment

damd Over a year ago

This was what I was looking for, but I didn't have to provide a --router argument, maybe that's optional now, five years later? :)

Vaibhav Gupta · Accepted Answer · 2017-12-16 10:49:23Z

25

if you are using Django 2.0 Then

python manage.py flush

will work

answered Dec 16, 2017 at 10:49

Vaibhav Gupta

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Comments

Javad · Accepted Answer · 2022-11-30 11:10:53Z

24

If you want to clean the whole database, you can use:

python manage.py flush

If you want to clean the database table of a Django app, you can use:

python manage.py migrate <app-name> zero

edited Nov 30, 2022 at 11:10

Javad

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answered May 13, 2016 at 19:02

Abhijeet Padhy

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2 Comments

DjangoDev1 Over a year ago

Although the question is old, this should be the accepted answer. There's no need for django-extensions when migrate zero works fine.

Ivan Castellanos Dec 21, 2024 at 9:18

Migrate zero does NOT work fine in some cases as I discovered, triggering errors about table constrains @DjangoDev1

Gursimran Singh · Accepted Answer · 2017-10-22 07:33:08Z

14

With django 1.11, simply delete all migration files from the migrations folder of each application (all files except __init__.py). Then

Manually drop database.
Manually create database.
Run python3 manage.py makemigrations.
Run python3 manage.py migrate.

And voilla, your database has been completely reset.

answered Oct 22, 2017 at 7:33

Gursimran Singh

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1 Comment

toto_tico Over a year ago

if using sqlite, no need to manually create the database, python3 manage.py makemigrations and python3 manage.py migrate will take care of that, at least in django 2.0

Thusitha Deepal · Accepted Answer · 2019-07-18 04:29:35Z

6

python manage.py flush

deleted old db contents,

Don't forget to create new superuser:

python manage.py createsuperuser

answered Jul 18, 2019 at 4:29

Thusitha Deepal

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Comments

yask · Accepted Answer · 2015-07-30 16:46:02Z

4

For me this solved the problem.

heroku pg:reset DATABASE_URL

heroku run bash
>> Inside heroku bash
cd app_name && rm -rf migrations && cd ..
./manage.py makemigrations app_name
./manage.py migrate

answered Jul 30, 2015 at 16:46

yask

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Comments

Community · Accepted Answer · 2017-05-23 11:54:59Z

3

Just a follow up to @LisaD's answer.
As of 2016 (Django 1.9), you need to type:

heroku pg:reset DATABASE_URL
heroku run python manage.py makemigrations
heroku run python manage.py migrate

This will give you a fresh new database within Heroku.

edited May 23, 2017 at 11:54

CommunityBot

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answered Apr 27, 2016 at 13:01

Jan

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Comments

Eric Aya · Accepted Answer · 2019-02-06 18:11:20Z

3

Just manually delete you database. Ensure you create backup first (in my case db.sqlite3 is my database)
Run this command manage.py migrate

edited Feb 6, 2019 at 18:11

Eric Aya

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answered Feb 6, 2019 at 17:26

bikram

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Comments

smeric · Accepted Answer · 2022-08-21 23:54:46Z

0

I use python manage.py flush on django 4.1 with postreSQL

answered Aug 21, 2022 at 23:54

smeric

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