Delete all nodes of a given content type

Question

I have several thousand nodes of a particular content type. Using the web interface (example.com/admin/content), I can only delete about 50 at a time. How can I quickly delete them?

Answer 1

There is a module for that (TM).

See Bulk Delete.

That will use the Batch API to delete the nodes to avoid timeout or memory issues when deleting thousands of nodes with a single call to node_delete_multiple().

Bulk Delete is an abandoned module. See for alternatives:

• Views Bulk Operations

• Delete All

Answer 2

Looking at the Devel Generate module for inspiration, here is it's "content kill" function:

function devel_generate_content_kill($values) {
  $results = db_select('node', 'n')
              ->fields('n', array('nid'))
              ->condition('type', $values['node_types'], 'IN')
              ->execute();
  foreach ($results as $result) {
    $nids[] = $result->nid;
  }

  if (!empty($nids)) {
    node_delete_multiple($nids);
    drupal_set_message(t('Deleted %count nodes.', array('%count' => count($nids))));
  }
}

So I would try either using Devel Generate to delete all nodes but create no new ones, or use example.com/devel/php to call devel_generate_content_kill(array('node_types' => array('my_node_type'))); directly.

Answer 3

Create a file with below code in root of drupal installation and execute the file.

<?php
  require_once './includes/bootstrap.inc';
  drupal_bootstrap(DRUPAL_BOOTSTRAP_FULL);

  $aquery= db_query("SELECT nid FROM {node} AS n WHERE n.type = 'company'");
  while ($row = db_fetch_object($aquery)) {
    node_delete($row->nid);
  }
?>

Answer 4

Views Bulk operations provides a BatchAPI enabled, configurable node admin screen that allows filtering by type, selection of all nodes matching your search criteria, etc.

That's my hands-down solution in Drupal 6 - besides batch delete, you can bulk-edit nodes and do a bunch of other stuff.

It looks like the Drupal 7 version isn't ready yet - but I'd be watching that module for a D7 release.

Answer 5

If you want to do it purely through the UI, you can use the devel_generate module.

1. Navigate to the "Generate Content" menu in "Configuration" (admin/config/development/generate/content).
2. Select the content types you want to delete.
3. Make sure the checkbox next to "Delete all content in these content types before generating new content" is checked.
4. Set the number of nodes you'd like to generate to "0".

This way, no nodes will be generated and all nodes of the selected types will be deleted.

Answer 6

I ended up using db_delete, no modules required:

<?php
  db_delete('node')
    ->condition('type', 'MY_CONTENT_TYPE')
    ->execute();
?>

Edit/Warning: See Berdir's comment below. This method does not clean up all data related to the nodes.

Answer 7

Another snippet is:

$query = db_query("SELECT n.nid FROM {node} n WHERE n.type = 'TO_BE_DELETED'"); 
while ($n = db_fetch_object($query)) 
{
     node_delete($n->nid); 
} 

where TO_BE_DELETED is the content type to be deleted.