To remove a document from a Edge SDK device without permanently deleting it see EVICT.
When using DELETE ensure that devices running Ditto Edge SDK are on version 4.10.1 and later.For more information on how to use delete and manage data reach out to Ditto’s Customer Support
When using DELETE on Edge SDKs-Only deployments reach out to Ditto’s Customer Support to ensure the best design patterns are being used to avoid data loss and/or performance related issues.
Deletes in Ditto requires all devices to connect and share information within the TTL window. If a device goes offline then appears later after all other devices have evicted the deleted document the connecting device will not know the document was deleted and share it with other peers.Deletes in Ditto require all devices to connect and share updates within the configured TTL (time-to-live) window. Default 7 days (TOMBSTONE_TTL_HOURS) for Edge SDK, 30 days for Ditto Cloud.If a device goes offline and returns after all other devices have already evicted the deleted document, that device will not be aware of the deletion. As a result, it may reintroduce the document to the sync network, causing it to reappear on other devices.To learn more about how to best use DELETE in your application reach out to Ditto’s Customer Support
The DELETE operation permanently removes one or more documents from a Ditto collection. Once a document is deleted it cannot be recovered. Deleted documents can be re-created by using the INSERT operation with the same document id as the deleted document.

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Syntax

DQL
DELETE FROM your_collection_name
WHERE [condition]
ORDER BY [order by]
LIMIT [limit]
OFFSET [offset]
In this syntax:
  • your_collection_name is the name of the collection from which you want to retrieve the data.
  • [condition] represents the condition or criteria that determine which documents should be evicted from the local peer.
  • [order by] represents the path within a document to use to order the dataset and order (ASC or DESC).
  • [limit] represents the maximum number of documents that should be evicted.
  • [offset] represents the offset from 0 that should be used for the eviction query, in practice this should be rarely used.

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Examples of Deleting Documents

Here, the document with ID 123 is permanently removed from the cars collection:
DQL
DELETE FROM cars
WHERE _id = '123'
In the following snippet, all documents created before the defined value are removed:
DQL
DELETE FROM cars
WHERE created_at < 1699888298000

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Using DQL to Delete Documents in the Edge SDK

For specifics on deleting documents Ditto SDKs see SDK>CRUD>Removing Documents.

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TOMBSTONE Keyword

The TOMBSTONE keyword (currently Ditto Server only) is a synonym for the new DELETE keyword. Users using the TOMBSTONE keyword will get the auto cleanup properties of DELETE without any changes.TOMBSTONE will be deprecated/removed in an upcoming Major release.

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Removing Fields from Documents

The DELETE keyword is used to remove documents from a collection. To remove a specific field from a document see Update > Deleting Fields.