> For the complete documentation index, see [llms.txt](https://ploegert.gitbook.io/til/llms.txt). Markdown versions of documentation pages are available by appending `.md` to page URLs; this page is available as [Markdown](https://ploegert.gitbook.io/til/programmy/heroku/wipe-a-heroku-postgres-database.md).

# Wipe A Heroku Postgres Database

## Wipe A Heroku Postgres Database

If you have some sort of non-production version of an application running on Heroku, you may encounter a time when you need to wipe your database and start fresh. For a rails project, it may be tempting to do `heroku run rake db:drop db:setup`. Heroku doesn't want you to accidentally do anything stupid, so it prevents you from running `rake db:drop`. Instead, you must send a more explicit command

```
$ heroku pg:reset DATABASE_URL
```

Heroku will ask you to confirm that you indeed want to wipe out the database and will then proceed.

For the curious reader, running `heroku config` will list the values of a number of variables including `DATABASE_URL`.