DeleteEntity

Deletes entity objects that satisfy the specified constraints. All connections associated with the objects will also be deleted.

Parameters

ref and constraints are optional and are intersected when both are present. with_class further narrows the selection. Scope warning: omitting all selectors targets every object in public entity classes. Always supply selectors for a scoped mutation.

Parameter	JSON type	Behavior
constraints	array expression	Optional. No property filter; the command-specific selector requirement still applies. Filters existing objects using the constraints expression language. When ref is supplied it filters that referenced set.
ref	integer, 1 through 100000	Optional. Select using the other supplied selectors; see the selection rule above. Uses an earlier compatible Entity reference in this transaction; forward references, wrong types, and undeclared references are rejected.
with_class	nonempty string, not starting with underscore	Optional. No additional class restriction; without a reference, all public classes are eligible. Restricts the mutation to this entity class, including when ref is supplied.

Details

Deleting objects selected by ref invalidates that reference for the remaining commands in the transaction.

A preceding Find command can select objects using more complex criteria and pass its result to the delete command through ref.

Deletion is computationally expensive; ApertureDB is optimized for workloads that perform more reads than deletes.

Response and errors

An authenticated session with the objects delete permission is required.

The response is an object under DeleteEntity with integer status and, on success, integer count. Status 0 means the mutation completed; count is the number of selected objects affected, including zero when none match. No output blobs are returned.

Invalid field types, missing required fields, malformed expressions, and invalid references fail validation. Execution failures include a nonzero status and an info message; inspect the transaction response before assuming a mutation succeeded. Deleting nodes also removes incident connections.

Examples

Delete entities of class “Animal” whose “species” property equals “Mammal”:

[{
    "DeleteEntity": {
        "with_class": "Animal",
        "constraints": ["$species", "==", "Mammal"]
    }
}]

Successful response:

[{
    "DeleteEntity": {
        "status": 0,
        "count": 1
    }
}]

Delete entities of the class “Patient” with “firstname” property equal to “Bob” and connected to entities of class “Visit” with “billing_id” value set to 125:

[{
    "FindEntity": {
        "_ref": 1,
        "with_class": "Visit",
        "constraints": ["$billing_id", "==", 125]
    }
}, {
    "FindEntity": {
        "_ref": 2,
        "with_class": "Patient",
        "constraints": ["$firstname", "==", "Bob"],
        "is_connected_to": {
            "ref": 1
        }
    }
}, {
    "DeleteEntity": {
        "ref": 2
    }
}]

Successful response:

[{
    "FindEntity": {
        "returned": 0,
        "status": 0
    }
}, {
    "FindEntity": {
        "returned": 0,
        "status": 0
    }
}, {
    "DeleteEntity": {
        "status": 0,
        "count": 1
    }
}]