Fabric Function For Rebuilding a Django MySQL Database

This is a very specific blog post on what my Fabric fabfile.py looks like for rebuilding my database. This is particularly useful early in a project lifecycle before I start using South for database migrations and instead I am building new tables and columns at a fast clip.

def rebuild_db():
  run('mysql -u %s -p%s -e "drop database if exists %s"' % (env.db_user,
    env.db_passwd, env.db_schema))
  run('mysql -u %s -p%s -e "create database %s"' % (env.db_user,
    env.db_passwd, env.db_schema))
  virtualenv('python %smanage.py syncdb --noinput' % \
    env.deploy_dir)
  virtualenv('python %smanage.py loaddata %s/core/' +
    'fixtures/test.json' % (env.deploy_dir, env.deploy_dir))

A few notes:

• You should define env.db_user, env.db_passwd, env.db_schema, env.deploy_dir in your fabfile before calling this function.
• I put my main test.json fixture under a "core" app directory. Parameterize these settings if your project structure differs.