How to delete multiple documents in Azure Cosmos DB

Question

On Azure Cosmos DB portal, Data Explorer doesn't allow deletion of more than one document.

Is it possible to delete multiple documents in one go?

score 2 · Answer 1 · edited Mar 12 '20 at 15:05

2

You cannot delete multiple documents, but you can use stored procedure to delete documents in one partition.

Please refer to this Q&A set for information on that: Azure CosmosDB: stored procedure delete documents based on query

edited Mar 12 '20 at 15:05

TylerH

20,799
66
75
101

answered Jun 12 '19 at 16:21

Agrawal Shraddha

734
1
5
18

It does delete items from single partition only. – Gentleman Aug 17 '23 at 10:21

score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 12 '19 at 15:04

0

No, you can't delete multiple documents in one go. Each document must be deleted separately.

One possible solution would be to write a stored procedure and pass the list of document ids that you want to delete. In that stored procedure, you can loop through that list and delete individual documents.

answered Jun 12 '19 at 15:04

Gaurav Mantri

128,066
12
206
241

I knew that, I want to avoid coding if possible. – Pingpong Jun 12 '19 at 15:15
1

If you're looking for a tool to delete multiple documents, do take a look at Cerebrata Cerulean (https://www.cerebrata.com/products/cerulean). It lets you select multiple documents and delete them in one go (behind the scenes, it deletes each document separately though). [Full Disclosure: My company is behind this tool] – Gaurav Mantri Jun 12 '19 at 15:21
Is it free to use? – Pingpong Jun 12 '19 at 15:57
Yes. It is a commercial software but we're offering a free 1 year subscription to all of our users so at least for an year you can use it for free. – Gaurav Mantri Jun 12 '19 at 16:02
is the software open source? My concern is that I have to provide the login credential of my work account. – Pingpong Jun 12 '19 at 18:39
1

@Pingpong This really isn't the place to have a discussion on how to get a product for free. – David Makogon Jun 29 '19 at 03:34

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered May 19 '23 at 09:33

I ended up creating a small C# console application with the Microsoft.Azure.Cosmos NuGet package installed. It might not be the fastest way of deleting documents, but it gets the job done. It assumes using /id as the partition key:

using Microsoft.Azure.Cosmos;

// Fill in these
const string connectionString "";
const string databaseName = "";
const string containerName = "";
const string query = ""; // For example "SELECT c.id FROM c WHERE c.EnqueuedTimeUtc >= '2023-05-11T15:00';
const int batchCount = 80; // Some limit to prevent getting "429 Too Many Requests".

var client = new CosmosClient(connectionString);
var container = client.GetContainer(databaseName, containerName);
var iterator = container.GetItemQueryIterator<MyDoc>(query, requestOptions: new QueryRequestOptions { MaxItemCount = batchCount });
while (iterator.HasMoreResults)
{
    var response = await iterator.ReadNextAsync();
    var deleteTasks = response.Select(doc => container.DeleteItemAsync<object>(doc.id, new PartitionKey(doc.id))).ToList();
    await Task.WhenAll(deleteTasks);
    Console.WriteLine($"{DateTime.Now:T} - Deleted {deleteTasks.Count} documents");
}

Console.WriteLine("Done!");

class MyDoc
{
    public string id { get; set; }
}

does anyone know if its cheaper to do bulk deletes in a stored proc. i suspect it would be — Squibly, Jun 21 '23 at 01:28

How to delete multiple documents in Azure Cosmos DB

3 Answers3