MySQL: Check if the user exists and drop it

Question

There’s not standard way to check if a MySQL user exists and based on that drop it. Are there any workarounds for this?

Edit: I need a straight way to run this wi

Answer 1

Regarding @Cherian's answer, the following lines can be removed:

SET @OLD_SQL_MODE=@@SQL_MODE, SQL_MODE='ANSI';
...
SET SQL_MODE=@OLD_SQL_MODE;
...

This was a bug pre 5.1.23. After that version these are no longer required. So, for copy/paste convenience, here is the same with the above lines removed. Again, for example purposes "test" is the user and "databaseName" is the database; and this was from this bug.

DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS databaseName.drop_user_if_exists ;
DELIMITER $$
CREATE PROCEDURE databaseName.drop_user_if_exists()
BEGIN
  DECLARE foo BIGINT DEFAULT 0 ;
  SELECT COUNT(*)
  INTO foo
    FROM mysql.user
      WHERE User = 'test' and  Host = 'localhost';
   IF foo > 0 THEN
         DROP USER 'test'@'localhost' ;
  END IF;
END ;$$
DELIMITER ;
CALL databaseName.drop_user_if_exists() ;
DROP PROCEDURE IF EXISTS databaseName.drop_users_if_exists ;

CREATE USER 'test'@'localhost' IDENTIFIED BY 'a';
GRANT ALL PRIVILEGES  ON databaseName.* TO 'test'@'localhost'
 WITH GRANT OPTION

Answer 2

DROP USER IF EXISTS 'user'@'localhost' ;

that works for me without throwing any errors in Maria DB, it should work for u too