Method to delete page and children with rest api?

[Nils Schieschke]

I want to automate deleting certain pages that don't meet certain criteria using the rest api.

At the moment, I have a recursive function that get the children of a page and deletes them using a rest call:

rest.delete(baseUrl + "/content/" + pageId, user, pw);

Using this call, I have to make an API call for every page, which takes ~250 ms per call.
This is too slow for my liking when I have to delete a couple hundred pages.

Is there a way to delete a page and it's children with ONE API call?

[Thomas Deiler · Accepted solution]

Dear @Nils Schieschke ,

unfortunatelly the rest api has no bulk delete, but you could speed up the recursive deletion when you fork your process for each leaf you have reached.

Example: Your top parent page has three children. For each of its child you start the recursive function in a news fork/thread. And so on.

Concurrent REST calls should be possible. If there is a limitation (I doubt), start the fork/threads with different system users.

So long

Thomas

[Nils Schieschke]

Hey Thomas,

while running the deletion in parallel would of course help, the process will not be run threaded, so that is sadly not a viable option.

Thanks,
Nils

[Thomas Deiler]

Dear @Nils Schieschke ,

I think the interesting aspect is, that you can fire (thread) the rest call without waiting for its return.

This would result in a (more or less) synchronos deletion of a page tree. The limit will be maxThreads (of server.xml).

So long

Thomas

[Nils Schieschke]

Hey @Thomas Deiler ,

you're right, I didn't even think of that.

Thank you!

[Thomas Deiler]

Dear @Nils Schieschke ,

don't forget to press the "green accept answer" button to indicate other readers the successful answering of your question.

Thanks
Thomas