Conditional Delete

The conditional delete operation allows deleting all resources matching certain criteria. The same search parameter as in the search type interaction can be used. The search is always strict, so it will fail on any unknown search parameter.

DELETE [base]/[type]?[search parameters]

By default, delete is only performed if one resource matches. However, it's possible to allow deleting multiple resources by setting the environment variable ALLOW_MULTIPLE_DELETE to true.

NOTE

Blaze runs all writes as transactions one at a time in a single total order (actual serial execution). A transaction can only start once the previous one has finished, so a conditional delete matching many resources becomes one large transaction that blocks all smaller ones until it completes. See Actual Serial Execution for details.

NOTE

Due to stability concerns, there is a fix limit of 10,000 resources that can be deleted by this interaction. In case more than 10,000 resources match, an OperationOutcome with code too-costly is returned.

The successful response will have the status code 204 No Content with no payload by default. However, it's possible to specify a return preference of OperationOutcome by setting the Prefer header to return=OperationOutcome. In this case a success OperationOutcome with a diagnostic of the number of deleted resources is returned.

Example

{
  "resourceType": "OperationOutcome",
  "issue": [
    {
      "severity": "success",
      "code": "success",
      "diagnostics": "Successfully deleted 120 Provenances."
    }
  ]
}