How to Drop Databases in PostgreSQL
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Transcript:
In this episode, we're going to look at how to drop databases in Postgres.
To begin, let's create a new database. We'll call it "example".
```sql
create database example;
```
We can drop databases in Postgres using the "drop database" command. This command requires the name of the database we wish to drop.
```sql
drop database example;
```
The drop database command has an "if exists" flag, to prevent any errors that may be raised if we try to remove a database that doesn't exist.
We can see such an error if we try to remove our example database again.
```sql
drop database example;
```
However, if we add the "if exists" flag, we no longer receive the error.
```sql
drop database if exists example;
```
One final note on dropping databases is that it is not possible to drop a template database.
To explore this behavior, let's first create a template database.
```sql
create database example is_template true;
```
When we try to drop the database, we can see that Postgres throws an error.
```sql
drop database example;
```
To drop a template database, we must first update it to no longer be a template. We can do this with the "alter database" command, setting is template to false.
```sql
alter database example is_template false;
```
We can now run our drop database command again to see that it runs successfully.
```sql
drop database example;
```
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