Can we delete records through the API?

[Paul Collins]

Hi. Our archivist has asked me if we can use the API to do mass deletion of unwanted records, to save time manually clicking and deleting each one.

Looking at the developer documentation, it seems this may not be possible: the available endpoints are "browse taxonomy terms", "browse information objects", and "read information object".

Is there any convenient way to delete records automatically? Maybe this would be a useful feature to add to the API?  I suppose we could also do it through MySQL but there might be issues around foreign-key integrity in related tables -- I would be reluctant to jump in there and start issuing DELETE commands.

Paul C.

[Paul Collins]

To clarify: by "unwanted records" I mean a list of AtoM reference codes or what-not. I'm not suggesting that the system should automatically determine on its own what to delete.  Merely that we might want to delete a large batch (including any related JPEG attachments etc) without all the manual mouse-clicking. -- Thanks!

[Dan Gillean]

Hi Paul, 

At present, no - the API endpoints do not support deletion. 

However, there is a command-line task that can be used for deletion. See: 

• https://www.accesstomemory.org/docs/latest/admin-manual/maintenance/cli-tools/#delete-a-description
  

It's not currently set to be used for bulk deletions, but: 

1. If you delete a parent record, the deletion will cascade to the descendants
2. There is an option to delete all descriptions associated with a particular repository
3. There's also a separate CLI task that can delete all drafts, described here

One way this task could potentially be extended would be to allow the user to provide a file with a list of slugs for deletion. I imagine this would require less development effort than adding a new API endpoint. 

I don't recommend performing deletions via MySQL if you can avoid it, since data is spread across multiple tables, and you could leave partials if you're not careful. 

Cheers, 

Dan Gillean, MAS, MLIS
AtoM Program Manager
Artefactual Systems, Inc.
604-527-2056

@accesstomemory

he / him

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