HTTP Delete Object

Deletes an object from the specified bucket / key.

Request

DELETE /riak/bucket/key           # Old format
DELETE /buckets/bucket/keys/key   # New format

Optional query parameters:

rw - quorum for both operations (get and put) involved in deleting an object (default is set at the bucket level)
r - (read quorum) how many replicas need to agree when retrieving the object
pr - (primary read quorum) works like r but requires that the nodes read from are not fallback nodes
w - (write quorum) how many replicas must confirm receiving writes before returning a successful response
dw - (durable write quorum) how many replicas to commit to durable storage before returning a successful response
pw - (primary write quorum) how many replicas to commit to primary nodes before returning a successful response

Response

Client ID

All requests to Riak <1.0 or Riak 1.0 without vnode_vclocks enabled should include the X-Riak-ClientId header, which can be any string that uniquely identifies the client, for purposes of tracing object modifications in the vector clock.

Normal response codes:

204 No Content
404 Not Found

Typical error codes:

400 Bad Request - e.g. when rw parameter is invalid (> N)

404 responses are “normal” in the sense that DELETE operations are idempotent and not finding the resource has the same effect as deleting it.

Example

$ curl -v -X DELETE http://127.0.0.1:8098/riak/test/test2
* About to connect() to 127.0.0.1 port 8098 (#0)
*   Trying 127.0.0.1... connected
* Connected to 127.0.0.1 (127.0.0.1) port 8098 (#0)
> DELETE /riak/test/test2 HTTP/1.1
> User-Agent: curl/7.19.4 (universal-apple-darwin10.0) libcurl/7.19.4 OpenSSL/0.9.8l zlib/1.2.3
> Host: 127.0.0.1:8098
> Accept: */*
>
< HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
< Vary: Accept-Encoding
< Server: MochiWeb/1.1 WebMachine/1.9.0 (participate in the frantic)
< Date: Fri, 30 Sep 2011 15:24:35 GMT
< Content-Type: application/json
< Content-Length: 0
<
* Connection #0 to host 127.0.0.1 left intact
* Closing connection #0