rollback-to-date

Last updated: September 2, 2025

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.

rollbacktodate

In Liquibase Secure 4.27.0 and later, you can automatically generate a database Rollback Report summarizing this command.

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. 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

* 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.

Command parameters

Attribute

Definition

Requirement

--changelog-file=<string>

The root changelog

Required

--date=<string>

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=<string>

The JDBC database connection URL.

Required

--change-exec-listener-class=<string>

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=<string>

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=<string>

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=<string>

Name of the default catalog to use for the database connection

Optional

--default-schema-name=<string>

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.

Note: In the properties file and JAVA_OPTS only: in 4.18.0 and earlier, specify this parameter using the syntax defaultSchemaName. In 4.19.0 and later, use the syntax liquibase.command.defaultSchemaName.

Note: In Liquibase 4.12.0 and later, you can use mixed-case schema names if you set --preserve-schema-case to true. However, in Liquibase 4.12.0–4.22.0, the Liquibase validator still throws a DatabaseException error if you specify a mixed-case value of defaultSchemaName. In 4.23.0 and later, the Liquibase validator accepts any casing.

Optional

--driver=<string>

The JDBC driver class

Optional

--driver-properties-file=<string>

The JDBC driver properties file

Optional

--label-filter=<string>

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=<string>

Password to connect to the target database.

Optional

--report-enabled=<true|false>

Enables a report at the command level. Overrides the global parameter --reports-enabled. Default: true.

Optional

--report-name=<string>

Specifies the name of the report file at the command level. Overrides the global parameter --reports-name. By default, Liquibase generates a new report file labeled with a timestamp (user's local time). If you set a custom name, Liquibase overwrites the existing file every time you generate a new report. Default: report-<DD-Mon-YYYY-HHmmss>.html.

Optional

--report-path=<string>

Specifies the file path to the report file at the command level. Overrides the global parameter --reports-path. Default: ./.

Optional

--report-suppress-exception=<true|false>

Liquibase 4.31.0+. Specifies whether to hide exceptions (which may contain SQL) from the operation report at the command level. Overrides the global parameter --reports-suppress-exception. Default: false. However:

If --report-suppress-exception is not set and --report-suppress-sql=true, Liquibase suppresses all SQL, including exception SQL.

If --report-suppress-exception=false and --report-suppress-sql=true, Liquibase suppresses most SQL but shows exception SQL.

Optional

--report-suppress-sql=<true|false>

Liquibase 4.31.0+. Specifies whether to hide changeset SQL in operation reports at the command level. Overridden by the global parameter --reports-suppress-sql. Default: false.

Optional

--rollback-script=<string>

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=<string>

Username to connect to the target database.

Optional

Output

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