# Entity: delete

# Description

Deletes the specified entity and removes the entity from any entity groups it belongs to.

# Data Removal

In addition to removing the entity itself, this operation creates background tasks to delete time series, properties, and messages collected by the entity.

The tasks are added to a database-persisted queue and are executed on a schedule controlled with the delete.schedule server property.

Pending tasks are displayed on the Settings > Storage > Delete Tasks page.

When the entity is deleted, the database creates one MESSAGE task, one PROPERTY task and multiple TIMESERIES tasks for each metric collected by the entity.

Due to the storage schema, the PROPERTY task does not instantly remove property records from the disk. Instead, the task inserts a DELETE marker with Long.MAX_VALUE time which hides all property records for the given entity name regardless of timestamp. As a result, re-inserting property records for a new entity with the same name is not possible until the marker is removed.

In the example below, the DELETE marker hides all records, including records with timestamps t=80 and t=150 for a new entity with the same name.

DELETE markers and the data they mask are removed in the background by a compaction process. Refer to the property delete endpoint for additional details on compaction.

# Request

Method	Path	Content-Type Header
DELETE	/api/v1/entities/{entity}	application/json

# Path Parameters

Name	Type	Description
entity	string	Entity name.

# Response

# Fields

None.

# Example

# Request

# URI

DELETE /api/v1/entities/nurswgvml001

# curl

curl https://atsd_hostname:8443/api/v1/entities/nurswgvml001 \
  -k --user {username}:{password} \
  --request DELETE

# Response

None.