35_Delete.asciidoc

Deleting a document

The syntax for deleting a document follows the same pattern that we have seen already, but uses the DELETE method :

DELETE /website/blog/123

If the document is found, Elasticsearch will return an HTTP response code of 200 OK and a response body like the following. Note that the _version number has been incremented.

{
  "found" :    true,
  "_index" :   "website",
  "_type" :    "blog",
  "_id" :      "123",
  "_version" : 3
}

If the document isn’t found, we get a 404 Not Found response code, and a body like:

{
  "found" :    false,
  "_index" :   "website",
  "_type" :    "blog",
  "_id" :      "123",
  "_version" : 4
}

Even though the document doesn’t exist — "found" is false —  the _version number has still been incremented. This is part of the internal book-keeping which ensures that changes are applied in the correct order across multiple nodes.

As already mentioned in [update-doc], deleting a document doesn’t immediately remove the document from disk — it just marks it as deleted. Elasticsearch will clean up deleted documents in the background as you continue to index more data.