Is there an easy way to clear a mongodb database running in docker?
Or possibly delete it all and create it again?
3 Answers
There are a number of ways:
- The same way you would normally clear a mongodb database. You're running it in Docker, but it is a real mongodb after all. See this, and this.
- If you've mounted your database's data as a volume on the host system using -v on the docker run command, you can just clear this folder out.
- If you haven't, the data lives in the container. You can remove the container and recreate it (docker rm container_name). Or run a shell in the container and remove the data from the container's filesystem (docker exec -it container_name bash).
Regarding the last option, you shouldn't be in this scenario because your data should live on the host system and your container should be disposable.
1 Comment
obesechicken13
You can also delete volumes using docker volume rm <volume_name>
docker exec -it mongodb_container bash -c "mongo db-name --eval 'db.dropDatabase()'" 
Comments
I had a case with slightly different requirements:
docker-compose- authentication needed
- bash variable expansion (the container was running with environemt variables
MONGO_USER&MONGO_PASSWORDalready set)
So, for anyone who might need a handy one-liner to authenticate and drop a mongo db with docker, here it is 👇:
docker-compose exec mongo_container_name /bin/bash -c 'mongo database_name -u $MONGO_USER -p $MONGO_PASSWORD --authenticationDatabase admin --eval "db.dropDatabase();"' And if you add a Makefile to the "mix", it's exactly the same but it needs $$ to the variables:
db-reset: docker-compose exec mongo_container_name /bin/bash -c 'mongo database_name -u $$MONGO_USER -p $$MONGO_PASSWORD --authenticationDatabase admin --eval "db.dropDatabase();"' 
docker container ls --allthendocker container rm <id>, then build again