Delete (Output Stage)

The delete() stage deletes all documents in the output of the preceding stage.

Examples

For example, the following pipeline deletes all users documents with address.users set to USA and with __create_time__ less than 10 days:

Node.js

const pipeline = db.pipeline()
  .collectionGroup("users")
  .where(field("address.country").equal("USA"))
  .where(field("__create_time__").timestampAdd("day", 10).lessThan(currentTimestamp()))
  .delete();
await pipeline.execute();test.firestore.js

Python

from google.cloud.firestore_v1.pipeline_expressions import CurrentTimestamp, Field

snapshot = (
    client.pipeline()
    .collection_group("users")
    .where(Field.of("address.country").equal("USA"))
    .where(
        Field.of("__create_time__")
        .timestamp_add("day", 10)
        .less_than(CurrentTimestamp())
    )
    .delete()
    .execute()
)firestore_pipelines.py

Java

Pipeline.Snapshot deleteResults = firestore.pipeline()
  .collectionGroup("users")
  .where(field("address.country").equal("USA"))
  .where(field("__create_time__").add(constant(10)).lessThan(currentTimestamp()))
  .delete()
  .execute().get();PipelineSnippets.java

Behavior

All data manipulation language (DML) stages must come at the end of the pipeline. The documents coming into this stage must include the __name__ field to identify which documents to delete. Most Input stages (like collection(...), collection_group(...), database(...), and documents(...)) include the __name__ field by default.

The response includes a summary of the number of documents modified. For example, the following response confirms that the pipeline modified three documents:

{documents_modified: 3L}

Limitations

DML stages don't support Firestore Security Rules. DML operation attempts through Firestore Security Rules are denied.
During the Preview for this feature, you cannot run DML stages in a transaction. For more information on consistency behavior see Consistency.
If the stage preceding the DML stage produces multiple documents with the same __name__, each instance is processed. For update(...), this means the same target document might be modified multiple times. For delete(...), subsequent attempts after the first will be no-ops.