DB Delete

The DB Delete block permanently removes records from a table. It passes on how many records it deleted, and what they looked like just before.

When to use it

• Remove something the user asked to delete, like a comment or an account.
• Clean up expired data, like old sessions or tokens.
• Don't use it when you may want the data back. Mark the record as deleted with DB Update instead. A delete can't be undone (unless it runs inside a DB Transaction that rolls back).
• Don't use it without conditions unless you mean to empty the table. See the warning below.

Inputs

Field	Required	Default	What it does
Connection	Yes	none	The database integration to use.
Table Name	Yes	none	The table (or collection) to delete from.
Conditions	No	none (every record)	Rules to find the records to delete, for example id equals 5. See DB Conditions. A condition whose value is undefined is skipped.
Save output to variable	No	off	Store the result in outputs.<name>.

Skipped conditions delete every record

If every condition is skipped, every record in the table is deleted. Make sure at least one condition always has a value.

Outputs

Handle	When it is used
Next (right)	The delete worked. The next block receives { count, affected }.

{ "count": 2, "affected": [{ "id": 4, "status": "cancelled" }, { "id": 9, "status": "cancelled" }] }

• count: how many records were deleted. 0 when nothing matched.
• affected: the deleted records, as they were just before the delete.

Example

Delete a comment, but only when it belongs to the caller.

Field	Value
Connection	main-db
Table Name	comments
Conditions	id = js:getRouteParam('id') AND author_id = js:userId

If the comment doesn't exist or belongs to someone else, the next block receives { "count": 0, "affected": [] }. Add an If Condition with input.count === 0 that leads to a 404 Response.

How it behaves

• No match is not an error. The output is { "count": 0, "affected": [] }.
• Every deleted record is returned, so deleting a large table returns a large output.
• Database errors (bad connection, missing table or column) go to the Error Handler.
• It replaces the flowing data with the result.

Related blocks

• DB Update: mark a record as deleted instead of removing it.
• DB Transaction: make a delete succeed or fail together with other changes.
• DB Conditions: how to pick the records.
• If Condition: answer 404 when nothing was deleted.