drop database with mongoose

There is no method for dropping a collection from mongoose, the best you can do is remove the content of one :

Model.remove({}, function(err) { 
   console.log('collection removed') 
});

But there is a way to access the mongodb native javascript driver, which can be used for this

mongoose.connection.collections['collectionName'].drop( function(err) {
    console.log('collection dropped');
});

Warning

Make a backup before trying this in case anything goes wrong!

Mongoose will create a database if one does not already exist on connection, so once you make the connection, you can just query it to see if there is anything in it.

You can drop any database you are connected to:

var mongoose = require('mongoose');
/* Connect to the DB */
mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost/mydatabase',function(){
    /* Drop the DB */
    mongoose.connection.db.dropDatabase();
});

If you modify @hellslam's solution like this then it will work

I use this technique to drop the Database after my integration tests

//CoffeeScript
mongoose = require "mongoose"
conn = mongoose.connect("mongodb://localhost/mydb")

conn.connection.db.dropDatabase()

//JavaScript
var conn, mongoose;
mongoose = require("mongoose");
conn = mongoose.connect("mongodb://localhost/mydb");

conn.connection.db.dropDatabase();

HTH at least it did for me, so I decided to share =)

The difficulty I've had with the other solutions is they rely on restarting your application if you want to get the indexes working again.

For my needs (i.e. being able to run a unit test the nukes all collections, then recreates them along with their indexes), I ended up implementing this solution:

This relies on the underscore.js and async.js libraries to assemble the indexes in parellel, it could be unwound if you're against that library but I leave that as an exerciser for the developer.

mongoose.connection.db.executeDbCommand( {dropDatabase:1}, function(err, result) {
  var mongoPath = mongoose.connections[0].host + ':' + mongoose.connections[0].port + '/' + mongoose.connections[0].name
  //Kill the current connection, then re-establish it
  mongoose.connection.close()
  mongoose.connect('mongodb://' + mongoPath, function(err){
    var asyncFunctions = []

    //Loop through all the known schemas, and execute an ensureIndex to make sure we're clean
    _.each(mongoose.connections[0].base.modelSchemas, function(schema, key) {
      asyncFunctions.push(function(cb){
        mongoose.model(key, schema).ensureIndexes(function(){
          return cb()
        })
      })
    })

    async.parallel(asyncFunctions, function(err) {
      console.log('Done dumping all collections and recreating indexes')
    })
  })
})

To empty a particular collection in a database:

model.remove(function(err, p){
    if(err){ 
        throw err;
    } else{
        console.log('No Of Documents deleted:' + p);
    }
});

Note:

1. Choose a model referring to particular schema(schema of collection you wish to delete).
2. This operation will not delete collection name from database.
3. This deletes all the documents in a collection.

Tried @hellslam's and @silverfighter's answers. I found a race condition holding my tests back. In my case I'm running mocha tests and in the before function of the test I want to erase the entire DB. Here's what works for me.

var con = mongoose.connect('mongodb://localhost/mydatabase');
mongoose.connection.on('open', function(){
    con.connection.db.dropDatabase(function(err, result){
        done();
    });
});

You can read more https://github.com/Automattic/mongoose/issues/1469