Delete data

FHIR delete

You can delete a single resource using Delete. This method deletes the resource specified and creates a history entry for the operation. The history entry created contains the entire deleted resource.

Note that Aidbox does not enforce referential integrity for DELETE method.

Example

Request:

DELETE /fhir/Patient/pt-1

Response:

meta:
  lastUpdated: '2022-09-20T12:55:25.226619Z'
  versionId: '5169631'
name:
  - given:
      - John
    family: Smith
id: pt-2

Transactional Delete

If you need to delete multiple resources, use Batch/Transaction with multiple DELETE requests.

This operation groups multiple REST API operations in a transaction. If all DELETE operations are successful, the transaction with DELETE requests is equivalent to calling DELETE multiple times.

Delete resource history

If you need to delete resource history, you need to execute SQL manually.

Example:

DELETE * FROM Patient_history
WHERE id='pt-1'

Or you can make a REST endpoint from SQL query using AidboxQuery.

Example:

PUT /AidboxQuery/remove-patient-history

params:
  id:
    isRequired: true
    type: string
    format: '%s'
query: 'DELETE FROM Patient_history where id = {{params.id}}'
type: execute

And then run it with

GET /$query/remove-patient-history?id=pt-1

Delete all resources and history

You can use truncate PostgreSQL statement to delete everything from the specified table.

Example:

truncate Patient;
truncate Patient_history;

Similarly you can create an endpoint for this

PUT /AidboxQuery/truncate

query: 'TRUNCATE "{{resourceType}}"; TRUNCATE "{{resourceType}}_history"'
type: execute

And then run it with

GET /Patient?_query=truncate

Note that AidboxQuery with variable resourceType can only be called with _query parameter.

Delete resources in CI environment

In CI environments it is often desired to have same state at the beginning of each test suite. You can simply stop Aidbox, drop database, and start Aidbox again.

Use Aidbox project RPC reference to set up fixtures. Note that you can use different Aidbox projects for each test suite (or different entrypoints).