Deleting records

Basic delete (:exec)

Use :exec when the caller only needs rows removed and does not need deleted data back.

-- name: delete_author :exec
DELETE FROM authors
WHERE id = :id;

example.py

async def delete_author(
    self,
    id: int,
) -> None:
    query = """
        DELETE FROM authors
        WHERE
          id = %(id)s
    """

    params = {
        "id": id,
    }

    async with self.db.cursor() as cur:
        await cur.execute(query, params)

        result = None

    return result

example.go

// coming soon

example.rs

// coming soon

example.ts

// coming soon

Delete and return deleted rows

Use RETURNING when the caller needs the deleted values.

-- name: delete_author_returning :one
DELETE FROM authors
WHERE id = :id
RETURNING *;

Generated mapping expands RETURNING * to explicit columns, the same way it handles SELECT * and UPDATE ... RETURNING *.

RETURNING a single column

-- name: delete_author_returning_id :one
DELETE FROM authors
WHERE id = :id
RETURNING id;

See Scalar returns.

Related guides

For runtime-composable delete criteria, see:

• Dynamic filtering