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Welcome to the Tour of SurrealDB!1: Connecting to a database2: Creating records3: Using the ONLY keyword4: Non-ASCII record IDs5: Parentheses and accessing fields6: Deleting records7: Field order in objects8: Tips when selecting records9: Casting and aliases10: Affixes11: Updating records12: Linking records13: Viewing the database as a whole14: Schemafull and schemaless15: Viewing the schema16: Literal types and assertions17: INSERT and using JSON18: FOR loops19: Basic graph relations20: Creating graph edges21: Querying graph relations22: Graph relations at greater depth23: Adding and improving data24: Defining events25: Defining indexes26: Improving the schema27: Visualising graph paths28: Recursive queries: setup29: Recursive queries30: More on recursive queries31: AI vector searchDone the tour!

6: Deleting records

None of our place records have any useful information, so let's delete them to get ready to finally create the one library that we need. Two things to know when using DELETE are:

  • A DELETE statement followed by a table name will delete all of the records from that table.

  • When SurrealDB performs an operation, it returns the result after the operation. So for DELETE, it will return nothing (an empty array).

Here is a quick example that shows this behaviour.

CREATE some_record;
DELETE some_record;

Response

-------- Query 1 --------

[
  {
    id: some_record:wqewkk86z6qqi18yenhc
  }
]

-------- Query 2 --------

[]

If you want to return the state before an operation, you can add RETURN BEFORE to the end of a query. This is used often in DELETE statements because it shows which records have been deleted.

DELETE place RETURN BEFORE;

Response

[
  {
    id: place:b53ful62pogdxvjb57sh,
    num_books: 10000,
    place_type: 'library'
  },
  {
    id: place:bx4iy7ckqzhyj5xkrba9
  },
  {
    id: place:e6uldb0aoq4jib2kfgqs,
    place_type: 'library'
  },
  {
    id: place:⟨ma_bibliothèque⟩
  },
  {
    id: place:mq62n1aic4nxpuiuss93
  },
  {
    id: place:my_library
  },
  {
    id: place:noamxxe7h1rx59403sdw
  },
  {
    id: place:p2n354tklmfpgxl3bifs
  },
  {
    id: place:⟨良い図書館⟩
  },
  {
    id: place:⟨𒂍𒁾𒁀𒀀⟩
  }
]

You can use a WHERE clause to delete records that match a certain condition, or DELETE on a single record ID to delete just one.

-- Delete everyone named "Bill":
-- might be zero, one, or more records
DELETE person WHERE name = "Bill";

-- Will only delete one record
DELETE person:bill;

You can also delete a range of records.

-- Delete from person:1 up to but not including person:3
DELETE person:1..3;

-- Delete from person:1 up to and including person:3
DELETE person:1..=3;

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5: Parentheses and accessing fields

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7: Field order in objects