Delete document

Delete document

Introduced 1.0

If you no longer need a document in your index, you can use the delete document API operation to delete it.

Path and HTTP methods

DELETE /<index>/_doc/<_id>

Path parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Required
<index>	String	The index to delete from.	Yes
<_id>	String	The ID of the document to delete.	Yes

Query parameters

Parameter	Type	Description	Required
if_seq_no	Integer	Only perform the delete operation if the document’s version number matches the specified number.	No
if_primary_term	Integer	Only perform the delete operation if the document has the specified primary term.	No
refresh	Enum	If true, OpenSearch refreshes shards to make the delete operation available to search results. Valid options are `true`, `false`, and `wait_for`, which tells OpenSearch to wait for a refresh before executing the operation. Default is `false`.	No
routing	String	Value used to route the operation to a specific shard.	No
timeout	Time	How long to wait for a response from the cluster. Default is `1m`.	No
version	Integer	The version of the document to delete, which must match the last updated version of the document.	No
version_type	Enum	Retrieves a specifically typed document. Available options are `external` (retrieve the document if the specified version number is greater than the document’s current version) and `external_gte` (retrieve the document if the specified version number is greater than or equal to the document’s current version). For example, to delete version 3 of a document, use `/_doc/1?version=3&version_type=external`.	No
wait_for_active_shards	String	The number of active shards that must be available before OpenSearch processes the delete request. Default is 1 (only the primary shard). Set to `all` or a positive integer. Values greater than 1 require replicas. For example, if you specify a value of 3, the index must have two replicas distributed across two additional nodes for the operation to succeed.	No

Example request

DELETE /sample-index1/_doc/1

copy

Example response

{
  "_index": "sample-index1",
  "_id": "1",
  "_version": 2,
  "result": "deleted",
  "_shards": {
    "total": 2,
    "successful": 2,
    "failed": 0
  },
  "_seq_no": 1,
  "_primary_term": 15
}

Response body fields

Field	Description
_index	The name of the index.
_id	The document’s ID.
_version	The document’s version.
_result	The result of the delete operation.
_shards	Detailed information about the cluster’s shards.
total	The total number of shards.
successful	The number of shards OpenSearch successfully deleted the document from.
failed	The number of shards OpenSearch failed to delete the document from.
_seq_no	The sequence number assigned when the document was indexed.
_primary_term	The primary term assigned when the document was indexed.