delete

---

Deletes one or more individual objects from your organization's data.

Syntax

DeleteResult[] = sfdc.delete(ID[] ids); 

Usage

Use delete to delete one or more existing objects, such as individual accounts or contacts, in your organization's data. The delete call is analogous to the DELETE statement in SQL.

Rules and Guidelines

When deleting objects, consider the following rules and guidelines:

Your client application must be logged in with sufficient access rights to delete individual objects within the specified object. For more information, see Factors that Affect Data Access.
In addition, you might also need permissions to access this object's parent object. For special access requirements, see the object's description in Chapter 5: sforce Objects.
To ensure referential integrity, the delete call supports cascading deletions. If you delete a parent object, you delete its children automatically, as long as each child object can be deleted. For example, if you delete a Case, the sforce API automatically deletes any CaseComment, CaseHistory, and CaseSolution objects associated with that case. However, if a CaseComment is not deletable or is currently being used, then the delete call on the parent Case will fail.
Certain objects cannot be deleted via the sforce API. To delete an object via the delete call, its object must be configured as deletable (deletable=True). To determine whether a given object can be deleted, your client application can invoke the describeSObject call on the object and inspect its deletable property.

Basic Steps for Deleting Objects

Deleting objects involves the following basic steps:

Determine the ID of each object that you want to delete. For example, you might call query to retrieve a set of records that you want to delete based on specific criteria.
Construct an ID[] array and populate it with the IDs of each object that you want to delete. You can specify the IDs of different objects. For example, you could specify the ID for an individual Account and an individual Contact in the same array.
Call delete, passing in the ID[] array.
Process the results in the DeleteResult[] object to verify whether the objects have been successfully deleted.

Sample Code-Java

public void deleteSample() { 
 
   // Create an array of IDs to hold the IDs of the records to delete 
   ID[] ids = new ID[2]; 
 
   // Add the IDs to the ID array 
   ids[0].setValue("001x00000000JerAAE"); 
   ids[1].setValue("001x00000000JesAAE"); 
 
   // Invoke the delete call 
   DeleteResult[] deleteResults = binding.delete(tasks); 
   // Process the results 
   for (int i=0;i<deleteResults.length;i++) { 
      DeleteResult deleteResult = deleteResults[i]; 
      // Determine whether delete succeeded or had errors 
      if (deleteResult.isSuccess()) { 
         // Get the id of the deleted record 
         deleteResult.getId(); 
         } 
      else { 
         // Handle the errors 
         Error[] errors = deleteResult.getErrors(); 
      } 
   } 
} 

Sample Code-C#

private void deleteAccount() 
{ 
   // Delete call takes an string array of Ids as parameter 
   String[] IDs = new Sring[] {""}; 
 
   // Invoke the delete call, saving the result in a DeleteResult object 
   DeleteResult[] deleteResults = binding.delete(IDs); 
 
   // Determine whether the delete call succeeded or failed 
   if (deleteResults[0].success) 
   { 
      // Delete operation succeeded 
      System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Deleted: " + deleteResults[0].id); 
   }  
   else  
   { 
      // Delete operation failed 
      System.Diagnostics.Trace.WriteLine("Couldn't delete because: " + 
deleteResults[0].errors[0].message); 
   } 
} 

Arguments

Name	Type	Description
ids	ID[]	Array of one or more IDs associated with the objects to delete. The sforce Web service deletes these objects in array index order. You can pass a maximum of 2000 object IDs to the delete call.

Response

DeleteResult[]

Fault

InvalidSObjectFault

UnexpectedErrorFault

See Also

Sample SOAP Messages-delete

Concepts