How to 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

In Drupal 8 one way is use the entityQuery() method with the EntityStorageInterface::delete() method:

$result = \Drupal::entityQuery("node")
    ->condition("type", "YOUR_CONTENT_TYPE_NAME")
    // If the update is being executed via drush entityQuery will only
    // return the content uid 0 have access to. To return all set
    // accessCheck to false since it defaults to TRUE. 
    ->accessCheck(FALSE)
    ->execute();

$storage_handler = \Drupal::entityTypeManager()->getStorage("node");
$entities = $storage_handler->loadMultiple($result);
$storage_handler->delete($entities);

If you need to apply other filters/conditions you can check the QueryInterface interface page

EDIT (Other way, thanks to @4k4):

$storage_handler = \Drupal::entityTypeManager()->getStorage("node");
$entities = $storage_handler->loadByProperties(["type" => "YOUR_CONTENT_TYPE_NAME"]);
$storage_handler->delete($entities);

If you want to test the code you can use:

drush php-eval '$storage_handler = \Drupal::entityTypeManager()->getStorage("node"); $entities = $storage_handler->loadByProperties(["type" => "article"]); $storage_handler->delete($entities);'

This will delete all your articles.

Answer 3

Looking at the Devel Generate module for inspiration, here is its "content kill" function devel_generate_content_kill:

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 4

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 5

You can do this is in Drupal 7 using the Execute PHP Code part of the Devel module by entering:

$result= db_query("SELECT nid FROM {node} AS n WHERE n.type = 'TYPE'");
foreach ($result as $record) {
  node_delete($record->nid);
}

Answer 6

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 7

Do this in terminal, if you use Drush and the delete all module:

 drush delete-all [content-type-machine-name]


Examples:
 drush delete-all article             Delect all article nodes.
 drush delete-all all                 Delete nodes of all types.
 drush delete-all --reset             Delete nodes of all types, and reset node, revision and comment counters.
 drush delete-all users               Delete users.

Options:
 --reset                              Reset counter for node, revision and comment tables.
 --roles                              pick roles

Answer 8

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 9

With Devel module, using drush:

drush genc 0 --types=article --kill

Or in UI as explained here: http://befused.com/drupal/delete-nodes-devel

Answer 10

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.

Answer 11

I use Delete all module, it works fine with D8 and provides very useful drush commands. For example, to delete all content of the article content type:

drush delete-all article  

Answer 12

You can try Delete all module, navigate to 'admin/content/delete_content' and you will be presented with a form for deletion of content belonging to certain content types.

Regards

Answer 13

If you have Migrate module enabled you can use:

$ drush migrate-wipe <content-type>

See Typical migrate commands using Drush.

Answer 14

In newer versions of Drush, you can use the entity:delete command to bulk delete nodes of a specific content type. No contributed modules or custom functions are required.

drush entity:delete node --bundle=content_type_machine_name

Another use of this command is to delete specific nodes. For example, to delete nodes 14, 16, 382, and 596, structure your command like this:

drush entity:delete node 14,16,382,596

More information can be found in the Drush documentation.

Answer 15

This module is used to delete all content and/or users from a site. This is mainly a developer tool, which can come in handy in several case

https://www.drupal.org/project/delete_all

as will as the Bulk Delete module will delete any nodes of a certain node-type using the batch api. It is advised to use the Views Batch Operations module (VBO) for a small number of nodes. But if you have to delete 10.000 nodes this module might be a better option.

https://www.drupal.org/project/bulkdelete

Answer 16

Delete all nodes of content type programmatically here is a helper function:

function _delete_all_nodes_of_type($type = '') {
  // Return all nids of nodes of type.
  $nids = db_select('node', 'n')
    ->fields('n', array('nid'))
    ->condition('n.type', $type)
    ->execute()
    ->fetchCol(); // returns an indexed array
  if (!empty($nids)) {
    node_delete_multiple($nids);
    drupal_set_message(format_plural(count($nids), count($nids) . ' node Deleted.', count($nids) . ' nodes Deleted.'));
  }
}

Answer 17

Not sure if this is fast but if you wanted to get feedback about which node it was deleting you could do something like this:

<?php

$nids = \Drupal::entityQuery('node')->condition('type','output')->execute();
$nodes =  \Drupal\node\Entity\Node::loadMultiple($nids);
foreach ($nodes as $n) {
    echo $n->id() . "\n";
    $n->delete();
}

You can rush it with something like drush scr del.php. The nid would be displayed right before it was deleted.

Answer 18

This is the most direct way but it has issues when you have a considerable amount of data.

$storage_handler = \Drupal::entityTypeManager()->getStorage("node");
$entities = $storage_handler->loadByProperties(["type" => "YOUR_CONTENT_TYPE_NAME"]);
$storage_handler->delete($entities);

To avoid this problem you could retrieve every node id by applying an entity query search and then doing each node deletion inside a for-each loop.

$query = \Drupal::entityQuery('node')->condition('type', 'YOUR_CONTENT_TYPE_NAME');
$nids = $query->execute();
$nodes = \Drupal::entityTypeManager()->getStorage('node')->loadMultiple($nids);
foreach ($nodes as $n) {
  $n->delete();
}

You can even play around adding any conditions to the query by keep calling the method condition('field_to_evaluate', 'value') (API docs).

Bonus

To execute from drush cli:

drush eval "
  \$query = \\Drupal::entityQuery('node')
    ->condition('type', 'YOUR_CONTENT_TYPE_NAME');
  \$nids = \$query->execute();
  \$nodes = \\Drupal::entityTypeManager()->getStorage('node')->loadMultiple(\$nids);
  foreach (\$nodes as \$n) {
    \$n->delete();
    echo 'Deleted node ' . \$n->id() . PHP_EOL;
  }
"

If you run into memory issues try to add php -d memory_limit=-1 before the drush command

Happy coding!

Answer 19

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.