rollback-to-date

The rollback-to-date command reverts your database to the state it was in at the date and time you specify.

Uses

The rollback-to-date command is mainly used when you want to revert all changes made to your database from today's date to the date and time you specify. The rollback-to-date command reverts those changesets to their previous state and allows you to target the date and time without impacting changes or deployments that came before the date and time you specified.

The image below shows four deployments performed at a different times: March, April, May, and February. Let's imagine that your current month is May and you want to roll back your database to March.

As you can see, the rollback-to-date command allows you to target deployment 2 performed on March 07, 2020 10:15 AM and revert all changes associated with deployments 4 through 2, to March without impacting the previous deployments—deployment 2 and 1.

Note: There are several ways to revert your changes with the rollback-to-date command. You can use YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS or YYYY-MM-DD'T'HH:MM:SS formats to specify both date and time. Also, you can specify date or time only.

Impact

The use of rollback-to-date comes with risk of removing all changes from today's date to the date you specified. Also, there is an additional impact to the DATABASECHANGELOG table. When any change is rolled back, the row associated with that change is deleted from the DATABASECHANGELOG table. For this reason, look for unintended consequences before using this command.

It is a best practice is to run the rollback-to-date-sql helper command because it allows you to inspect the rollback-to-date SQL and search for any potential mistakes before you execute the rollback-to-date command.

Syntax

Before running the rollback-to-date command, run the history command to see the dates of all your previous changes.

To run the rollback-to-date command, specify the driver, classpath, and URL in the Liquibase properties file. For more information, see Create and Configure a liquibase.properties File. You can also specify these properties in your command line.

Then run the rollback-to-date command:

liquibase rollback-to-date --date=2020-05-07 --changelog-file=example-changelog.xml

Command arguments

Tip: For best results, specify all commands and parameters in the --kebab-case format in the CLI. If your preference is camelCase, it also works in the CLI.

Attribute Definition Requirement
--changelog-file *

The root changelog

 Required
--date

The date and time your database rolls back to. The date format is YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS or YYYY-MM-DD'T'HH:MM:SS. However, it is possible to indicate the date or time only. Specify as --date=myDate. Positional format <command> <date> deprecated in 4.4+.

 Required
--url

The JDBC database connection URL. See Using JDBC URL in Liquibase.

 Required
--change-exec-listener-class

Fully-qualified class which specifies a ChangeExecListener. For more information, see Implementing a Custom ChangeExecListener Class with Liquibase and ChangeExecListenerCommandStep.

 Optional
--change-exec-listener-properties-file

Path to a properties file for the ChangeExecListener class. For more information, see Implementing a Custom ChangeExecListener Class with Liquibase and ChangeExecListenerCommandStep.

 Optional
--context-filter

Specifies the changeset contexts to match. Contexts are tags you can add to changesets to control which changesets are executed in any particular migration run.

Note: If you use Liquibase 4.23.0 or earlier, use the syntax --contexts instead of --context-filter.

 Optional
--default-catalog-name

Name of the default catalog to use for the database connection

 Optional
--default-schema-name

Name of the default schema to use for the database connection. If defaultSchemaName is set, then objects do not have to be fully qualified. This means you can refer to just mytable instead of myschema.mytable.

Tip: In Liquibase v4.23.0+, camelCase for defaultSchemaName works successfully. If you are on an earlier version, camelCase may not work as expected.

Note: The syntax liquibase.command.defaultSchemaName is valid for v4.19.0+. For prior versions, use defaultSchemaName.

 Optional
--driver

The JDBC driver class

 Optional
--driver-properties-file

The JDBC driver properties file

 Optional
--label-filter

Specifies the changeset labels to match. Labels are tags you can add to changesets to control which changesets will be executed in any migration run.

 Optional
--password

Password to connect to the target database.

Tip: It is a best practice to store sensitive data in a Secrets Management tool with Liquibase Pro.

 Optional
--rollback-script

The path to the script to use to perform the rollback. Only needed if the rollback is not already defined in the changelog, and if it is not a rollback statement that is automatically generated by Liquibase.

 Optional
--username

Username to connect to the target database.

Tip: It is a best practice to store sensitive data in a Secrets Management tool with Liquibase Pro.

 Optional

* Liquibase will check nested changelogs for definitions of the changesets to rollback.

Note: The username and password attributes are not required for connections and systems which use alternate means of authentication. Also, you can specify database credentials as part of the url attribute.

Output

Liquibase Community 4.9.1 by Liquibase
Liquibase command 'rollback-to-date' was executed successfully.