Delete By Query API

A DeleteByQueryRequest can be used to delete documents from an index. It requires an existing index (or a set of indices) on which deletion is to be performed.

The simplest form of a DeleteByQueryRequest looks like this and deletes all documents in an index:

DeleteByQueryRequest request =
        new DeleteByQueryRequest("source1", "source2"); 

By default version conflicts abort the DeleteByQueryRequest process but you can just count them with this:

request.setConflicts("proceed"); 

You can limit the documents by adding a query.

request.setQuery(new TermQueryBuilder("user", "kimchy")); 

It’s also possible to limit the number of processed documents by setting maxDocs.

request.setMaxDocs(10); 

By default DeleteByQueryRequest uses batches of 1000. You can change the batch size with setBatchSize.

request.setBatchSize(100); 

DeleteByQueryRequest can also be parallelized using sliced-scroll with setSlices:

request.setSlices(2); 

DeleteByQueryRequest uses the scroll parameter to control how long it keeps the "search context" alive.

request.setScroll(TimeValue.timeValueMinutes(10)); 

If you provide routing then the routing is copied to the scroll query, limiting the process to the shards that match that routing value.

request.setRouting("=cat"); 

In addition to the options above the following arguments can optionally be also provided:

request.setTimeout(TimeValue.timeValueMinutes(2)); 

request.setRefresh(true); 

request.setIndicesOptions(IndicesOptions.LENIENT_EXPAND_OPEN); 

When executing a DeleteByQueryRequest in the following manner, the client waits for the DeleteByQueryResponse to be returned before continuing with code execution:

BulkByScrollResponse bulkResponse =
        client.deleteByQuery(request, requestOptions);

Synchronous calls may throw an IOException in case of either failing to parse the REST response in the high-level REST client, the request times out or similar cases where there is no response coming back from the server.

In cases where the server returns a 4xx or 5xx error code, the high-level client tries to parse the response body error details instead and then throws a generic ElasticsearchException and adds the original ResponseException as a suppressed exception to it.

Executing a DeleteByQueryRequest can also be done in an asynchronous fashion so that the client can return directly. Users need to specify how the response or potential failures will be handled by passing the request and a listener to the asynchronous delete-by-query method:

client.deleteByQueryAsync(request, RequestOptions.DEFAULT, listener); 

The asynchronous method does not block and returns immediately. Once it is completed the ActionListener is called back using the onResponse method if the execution successfully completed or using the onFailure method if it failed. Failure scenarios and expected exceptions are the same as in the synchronous execution case.

A typical listener for delete-by-query looks like:

listener = new ActionListener<BulkByScrollResponse>() {
    @Override
    public void onResponse(BulkByScrollResponse bulkResponse) {
        
    }

    @Override
    public void onFailure(Exception e) {
        
    }
};

The returned DeleteByQueryResponse contains information about the executed operations and allows to iterate over each result as follows:

TimeValue timeTaken = bulkResponse.getTook(); 
boolean timedOut = bulkResponse.isTimedOut(); 
long totalDocs = bulkResponse.getTotal(); 
long deletedDocs = bulkResponse.getDeleted(); 
long batches = bulkResponse.getBatches(); 
long noops = bulkResponse.getNoops(); 
long versionConflicts = bulkResponse.getVersionConflicts(); 
long bulkRetries = bulkResponse.getBulkRetries(); 
long searchRetries = bulkResponse.getSearchRetries(); 
TimeValue throttledMillis = bulkResponse.getStatus().getThrottled(); 
TimeValue throttledUntilMillis =
        bulkResponse.getStatus().getThrottledUntil(); 
List<ScrollableHitSource.SearchFailure> searchFailures =
        bulkResponse.getSearchFailures(); 
List<BulkItemResponse.Failure> bulkFailures =
        bulkResponse.getBulkFailures();