Delete

The delete command is used to delete objects from the database.

delete Hero
filter .name = 'Iron Man';

Clauses

Deletion statements support filter, order by, and offset/limit clauses. See EdgeQL > Select for full documentation on these clauses.

delete Hero
filter .name ilike 'the %'
order by .name
offset 10
limit 5;

Link deletion

Every link is associated with a link deletion policy. By default, it isn’t possible to delete an object linked to by another.

db>

delete Hero filter .name = "Yelena Belova";

ConstraintViolationError: deletion of default::Hero
(af7076e0-3e98-11ec-abb3-b3435bbe7c7e) is prohibited by link target policy
{}

This deletion failed because Yelena is still in the characters list of the Black Widow movie. We must destroy this link before Yelena can be deleted.

db> 
... 
... 
... 
...

update Movie
filter .title = "Black Widow"
set {
  characters -= (select Hero filter .name = "Yelena Belova")
};

{default::Movie {id: af706c7c-3e98-11ec-abb3-4bbf3f18a61a}}

db>

delete Hero filter .name = "Yelena Belova";

{default::Hero {id: af7076e0-3e98-11ec-abb3-b3435bbe7c7e}}

To avoid this behavior, we could update the Movie.characters link to use the allow deletion policy.

type Movie {
  required property title -> str { constraint exclusive };
  required property release_year -> int64;
  multi link characters -> Person;
  multi link characters -> Person {
    on target delete allow;
  };
}

Cascading deletes

If a link uses the delete source policy, then deleting a target of the link will also delete the object that links to it (the source). This behavior can be used to implement cascading deletes; be careful with this power!

The full list of deletion policies is documented at Schema > Links.

Return value

A delete statement returns the set of deleted objects. You can pass this set into select to fetch properties and links of the (now-deleted) objects. This is the last moment this data will be available before being permanently deleted.

db> 
...

with movie := (delete Movie filter .title = "Untitled")
select movie {id, title};

{default::Movie {
  id: b11303c6-40ac-11ec-a77d-d393cdedde83,
  title: 'Untitled',
}}

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