API client / Methods / Manage indices
Required API Key: any key with the deleteIndex ACL
Method signature
$index->delete()

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About this method

Delete an index and all its settings, including links to its replicas.

Deleting an index doesn’t affect its analytics data.

If you try to delete a nonexistent index, the engine ignores the operation but doesn’t send back an error.

Deleting indices with replicas

When deleting an index with replicas, the replicas become independent indices.

You can’t delete a replica index directly. First, you must unlink it to turn it into a regular index. Then you can delete it.

Deleting only records

To only remove records from the index, use the clearObjects method. This preserves the index’s settings, Rules, and Synonyms.

Deleting multiple indices

To delete more than one index, see Delete multiple indices.

Examples

Read the Algolia CLI documentation for more information.

To see a complete app, including all import and setup instructions, go to Install the .NET API client.

To see a complete app, including all import and setup instructions, go to Install the Go API client.

To see a complete app, including all import and setup instructions, go to Install the Java API client.

To see a complete app, including all import and setup instructions, go to Install the Kotlin API client.

To see a complete app, including all import and setup instructions, go to Install the Scala API client.

To see a complete app, including all import and setup instructions, go to Install the Swift API client.

Delete an index by name

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<?php
require_once __DIR__."/vendor/autoload.php";
use Algolia\AlgoliaSearch\SearchClient;

// Use an API key with `deleteIndex` ACL
$client = SearchClient::create(
  'YourApplicationID', 'YourAPIKey'
);
$index = $client->initIndex('YourIndexName');
$index->delete();

Delete multiple indices

The Algolia CLI lets you delete multiple primary indices at the same time.

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algolia indices delete YOUR_INDEX_NAME_1 YOUR_INDEX_NAME_2 YOUR_INDEX_NAME_3

Parameters

Parameter Description
indexName
type: string
Required

Name of the index to be deleted.

Response

This section shows the JSON response returned by the API. Each API client encapsulates this response inside objects specific to the programming language, so that the actual response might be different. You can view the response by using the getLogs method. Don’t rely on the order of attributes in the response, as JSON doesn’t guarantee the ordering of keys in objects.

JSON format

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{
  "deletedAt": "2017-12-18T21:22:40.761Z",
  "taskID": 19541511530
}
Field Description
deletedAt
string

Date at which the job to delete the index has been created.

taskID
integer

The taskID for the waitTask method.

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