How can I drop a BigQuery partitioned table? - google-bigquery

Question

I don't want to delete tables one by one.
What is the fastest way to do it?

Answer 1

Basically you need to remove all partitions for the partitioned BQ table to be dropped.
Assuming you have gcloud already installed... do next:
Using terminal(check/set) GCP project you are logged in:
$> gcloud config list - to check if you are using proper GCP project.
$> gcloud config set project <your_project_id> - to set required project
Export variables:
$> export MY_DATASET_ID=dataset_name;
$> export MY_PART_TABLE_NAME=table_name_; - specify table name without partition date/value, so the real partition table name for this example looks like -> "table_name_20200818"
Double-check if you are going to delete correct table/partitions by running this(it will just list all partitions for your table):
for table in `bq ls --max_results=10000000 $MY_DATASET_ID | grep TABLE | grep $MY_PART_TABLE_NAME | awk '{print $1}'`; do echo $MY_DATASET_ID.$table; done
After checking run almost the same command, plus bq remove command parametrized by that iteration to actually DELETE all partitions, eventually the table itself:
for table in `bq ls --max_results=10000000 $MY_DATASET_ID | grep TABLE | grep $MY_PART_TABLE_NAME | awk '{print $1}'`; do echo $MY_DATASET_ID.$table; bq rm -f -t $MY_DATASET_ID.$table; done

Answer 2

The process for deleting a time-partitioned table and all the
partitions in it are the same as the process for deleting a standard
table.
So if you delete a partition table without specifying the partition it will delete all tables. You don't have to delete one by one.
DROP TABLE <tablename>

Answer 3

You can also delete programmatically (i.e. java).
Use the sample code of DeleteTable.java and change the flow to have a list of all your tables and partitions to be deleted.
In case needed for deletion of specific partitions only, you can refer to a table partition (i.e. partition by day) in the following way:
String mainTable = "TABLE_NAME"; // i.e. my_table
String partitionId = "YYYYMMDD"; // i.e. 20200430
String decorator = "$";
String tableName = mainTable+decorator+partitionId;
Here is the guide to run java BigQuery samples, and ensure to set your project in the cloud shell:
gcloud config set project <project-id>