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;

Run Query

[
  {
    id: some_record:wqewkk86z6qqi18yenhc
  }
]

[]

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

DELETE place RETURN BEFORE;

Run Query

[
  {
    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;