How to delete all records from or empty a custom database table?

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I can’t seem to find a simple reliable way to do this – perhaps?: 

// delete row ##
global $wpdb;
$delete = $wpdb->query( 
    $wpdb->prepare( 
         "DELETE * FROM `wp_table_name`"
    )
);

// return ##
$return = __('Table Emptied.');
if ( $wpdb->last_error ) {
    $return = $wpdb->last_error;
}

But this gives me the classic:

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You have an error in your SQL syntax; check the manual that corresponds to your MySQL server version for the right syntax to use near ‘* FROM wp_table_name’ at line 1

Post Views: 1

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4 comments

  1. I would just modify Q Studio example to:

    global $wpdb;
$table  = $wpdb->prefix . 'table_name';
$delete = $wpdb->query("TRUNCATE TABLE $table");

  2. Thanks @s_ha_dum – Truncate does the job nicely:

    // delete row ##
global $wpdb;
$delete = $wpdb->query("TRUNCATE TABLE `wp_table_name`");

  3. 2 years late, but maybe this will help someone in the future 🙂

    The correct syntax for deleting rows from a MySQL table is:

    DELETE FROM `wp_table_name`
WHERE 1 = 1;

  4. This is late and the answer been accepted. But no one mentioned that your DELETE SQL statement is incorrect. Try this:

    DELETE FROM `wp_table_name`

    However, this might still not work. You might need to change your MariaDB/MySQL settings, which protects such deletes, to prevent you from mistakenly deleting a full set of data. To make it work, you have to

    DELETE FROM `wp_table_name` WHERE `some_column` = 'some_value'

    Cheers

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