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Delete a collection

Deleting collections

Section titled “Deleting collections”

This endpoint lets you permanently remove a collection and all its objects from Tallyfy Answers1. This operation is irreversible and should be used with caution.

Permanent action

Deleting a collection permanently removes all objects within it. This can’t be undone, and there’s no way to recover the data once deleted.

API endpoint

Section titled “API endpoint”
DELETE /collections/{collection_name}

This endpoint needs the API key.

Path parameters

Section titled “Path parameters”
ParameterTypeRequiredDescription
collection_namestringYesName of the collection to delete

Response

Section titled “Response”

The service returns a 200 OK status code with this response:

{
  "message": "Collection is deleted successfully"
}

It returns this even when the collection didn’t exist or the delete failed, so a 200 doesn’t prove anything was removed. To check, get the collection afterwards and expect a 404.

Error scenarios

Section titled “Error scenarios”
StatusDescription
400Invalid collection name format
403The Authorization header is missing or doesn’t match the API key

Example request

Section titled “Example request”
Terminal window
curl -X DELETE https://answers.tallyfy.com/collections/products \
  -H "Authorization: Bearer your_api_key"

Before you delete

Section titled “Before you delete”

If a batch import is still running for the collection, stop it first with DELETE /tasks/{collection_name} (see Tasks). Deleting the collection doesn’t stop the import.

When to delete a collection

Section titled “When to delete a collection”

Consider deleting a collection when:

  • The data is no longer needed for any purpose
  • You need to rebuild a collection with a different structure
  • You want to remove test or development data
  • You’re performing cleanup of unused resources

Alternatives to deletion

Section titled “Alternatives to deletion”

Instead of permanently deleting a collection, you might consider these alternatives:

  • Export the data first with GET /collections/{collection_name}/objects, which returns every object’s properties
  • Delete every object but keep the collection with DELETE /collections/{collection_name}/objects
  • Create a new collection with only the objects you want to keep
  • Use application-level filtering to hide certain objects from users

Best practices

Section titled “Best practices”
  • Always confirm collection names before deletion
  • Consider implementing a confirmation step in your application
  • Back up important data before deletion
  • Use descriptive logging to track deletion operations
  • Keep the API key out of anything that doesn’t need it, since it can delete collections
Section titled “Related articles”

Answers > Collections

Collections in Tallyfy Answers group similar objects together, like database tables. You can…

Answers > Tasks

Tallyfy Answers runs batch imports in the background, so the import request doesn’t wait for…

Footnotes

Section titled “Footnotes”

  1. Tallyfy’s semantic search and knowledge management system using vector embeddings ↩

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