Delete deleted-posts permanently in bulk?

[rahulMasal]

Dear Team,

Please help me out to resolve this!

We have too many deleted-posts and we need to delete that permanently but in bulk!

[itsbhanusharma (Bhanu Sharma)]

A deleted topic is exactly what it is, a deleted topic. No further action is required and only admins can view such topics. You directly delete an already deleted topic.

[rahulMasal]

i dont want in deleted topics list i want to clear them from DB.

so if any command or any way to delete those??

[JammyDodger]

It’s not something I’ve done, but is this topic helpful:

The proper way to completely delete hundred of topics via rails?

Hi. I would like to delete ALL topics from a single category (~5000 topics) in order to re-import these topics from phpbb. I could delete these topics, but since Discourse doesn’t really delete them but hide them, my phpbb import won’t re-import these messages. I can’t just re-import from scratch either because I did a lot of configuration since my import. Not only discourse admin config but also reorganized categories, moved hundreds of topics by keywords, filtered a lot of messages with reg…

[rahulMasal]

Not Useful please help me if anything found?

[IAmGav (Gavin Perch)]

maybe this can help you

Deleting all topics in a category

To delete all topics from a category, you will need access SSH access to your server. If you use managed Discourse hosting, get in touch with your provider and ask them to help. If you run your own server, here are the steps you need to take to delete all topics in a category: This is a destructive action. Make sure to back up your forum before continuing Find the “slug” of your category. This is the name of category used in the URL. SSH into the server cd /var/discourse …

[rahulMasal]

not showing deleted-posts category ??

[j127 (Josh)]

@rahulMasal

deleted-posts

Do you have a category with the slug deleted-posts? The posts in your screenshot look like they are probably in categories that have different slugs.

[rahulMasal]

If I delete Category wise then all POSTS will delete which not in deleted-posts!

so can you help me to delete deleted-posts from DB.

[nathankershaw]

I’m trying to find a way to do this too. After much searching here on Meta, and a lot of trial and failure, I am now quite confused about it all.

Can we indeed permanently purge deleted posts from the database? How?

[IAmGav (Gavin Perch)]

if you can delete a category, then you can delete deleted posts.

rebuilding my test app now to install data explorer

[j127 (Josh)]

@rahulMasal

If I delete Category wise then all POSTS will delete which not in deleted-posts!

I’m not sure how to do it. I was just mentioning that the command you typed appears to be looking for a category with the slug deleted-posts.

[nathankershaw]

@IAmGav

if you can delete a category, then you can delete deleted posts.

When you delete a category using the Rake task, all the posts (not just topics) within it are deleted. However, they are only soft deleted.

I remain unsure of how to actually remove posts from the database. I also remain unsure of how to get rid of the uploads associated with my deleted posts. Both are causing quite a headache at the mo.

[JammyDodger]

@nathankershaw

I also remain unsure of how to get rid of the uploads associated with my deleted posts. Both are causing quite a headache at the mo.

I think the attachments will be cleaned up by one of the daily jobs, as long as they’re not part of the latest version of the post. So changing the deleted post to ‘(deleted by admin)’ or something would make its attachment part of the edit history and would then orphan it (thus scooping it up in the ‘clear orphan’ clean-up).

I am only theorising though, so this may be wrong.

Source:

@zogstrip

All the details are available in this job

https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/master/app/jobs/scheduled/clean_up_uploads.rb

TL;DR: an image is orphaned if and only if it’s not referenced

• in the latest version of a post
• in a draft
• in a queued post
• in a logo site setting
• in a custom emoji
• in a theme
• in a user avatar/background/card image
• in a category logo/background image

[IAmGav (Gavin Perch)]

if you log into postgres, you can delete it out of the DB.

I am looking at the current rake destoy tasks and tying to understand how it works. Maybe the ppl that created the current destroy task can implement something for us to del deleted posts

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

@JammyDodger

I think the attachments will be cleaned up by one of the daily jobs, as long as they’re not part of the latest version of the post.

Yes, that is correct.
In order to get rid of an attachment, you need to remove the contents of the post and then delete the post.

[rahulMasal]

if you got command aur anything helpful and quick then please share with me!

[nathankershaw]

@RGJ

In order to get rid of an attachment, you need to remove the contents of the post and then delete the post.

Thanks Richard and @JammyDodger!

My only issue is that I have 20,000 posts to do this to. Know any shortcuts?

[JammyDodger]

I’m afraid I’m at the start of my Discourse journey, so lack the necessary expertise for that.

Is it possible to amend this to target deleted posts rather than a user’s posts to achieve a similar thing?

Deleting a users posts (with large post count+history)

I think that what you’ll need to do is select all posts owned by the user and replace the post with Post deleted at request of user Something like Post.where("id = 123").update_all(raw: "Post deleted...") That’s not tested. You’d want to test it. I’m not sure if you’d need to rebake those posts or not. Edit: I think that’d still leave the edit history, though. But, maybe only if there were an edit history.

[RGJ (Richard - Communiteq)]

Post.with_deleted.where('deleted_at is not null').update_all(raw: 'This post has been deleted', cooked: 'This post has been deleted')