Delete

Using the following type definitions for these examples:

type Post {
    id: ID! @id
    content: String!
    creator: User! @relationship(type: "HAS_POST", direction: IN)
}

type User {
    id: ID! @id
    name: String
    posts: [Post!]! @relationship(type: "HAS_POST", direction: OUT)
}

The following delete Mutations and response type will be generated for the above type definitions:

type DeleteInfo {
    nodesDeleted: Int!
    relationshipsDeleted: Int!
}

type Mutation {
    deletePosts(where: PostWhere, delete: PostDeleteInput): DeleteInfo!
    deleteUsers(where: UserWhere, delete: UserDeleteInput): DeleteInfo!
}

Note that the DeleteInfo type is the common return type for all delete Mutations.

Single Delete

A single post can be deleted by executing the following GraphQL statement:

mutation {
    deletePosts(where: {
        id: "6042E807-47AE-4857-B7FE-1AADF522DE8B"
    }) {
        nodesDeleted
        relationshipsDeleted
    }
}

This will delete the post using the autogenerated ID that would have been returned after that post’s creation.

nodesDeleted would equal 1 (the post) and relationshipsDeleted would also equal equal 1 (the HAS_POST relationship between the Post and its author).

Nested Delete

Say that if when you delete a User, you want to delete all of their Posts as well. This can be achieved using a single nested delete operations:

mutation {
    deleteUsers(
        where: {
            name: "Jane Doe"
        },
        delete: {
            posts: [
                where: { }
            ]
        }
    ) {
        nodesDeleted
        relationshipsDeleted
    }
}

You may look at that empty where argument and wonder what that’s doing. By the time the traversal has reached that argument, it has the context of only posts that were created by Jane Doe, as the traversals to those Post nodes were from her User node. Essentially, the above query is equivalent to:

mutation {
    deleteUsers(
        where: {
            name: "Jane Doe"
        },
        delete: {
            posts: [
                where: {
                    node: {
                        creator: {
                            name: "Jane Doe"
                        }
                    }
                }
            ]
        }
    ) {
        nodesDeleted
        relationshipsDeleted
    }
}

Slightly easier to reason with, but the output Cypher statement will have a redundant WHERE clause!