# Bulk delete

To discover whether your Object Storage system supports this feature, see Discoverability. Alternatively, check with your service provider.

With bulk delete, you can delete up to 10,000 objects or containers (configurable) in one request.

## Bulk delete request

To perform a bulk delete operation, add the `bulk-delete` query parameter to the path of a `POST` or `DELETE` operation.

Note

The `DELETE` operation is supported for backwards compatibility.

The path is the account, such as `/v1/12345678912345`, that contains the objects and containers.

In the request body of the `POST` or `DELETE` operation, list the objects or containers to be deleted. Separate each name with a newline character. You can include a maximum of 10,000 items (configurable) in the list.

In addition, you must:

- UTF-8-encode and then URL-encode the names.

- To indicate an object, specify the container and object name as: `CONTAINER_NAME`/`OBJECT_NAME`.

- To indicate a container, specify the container name as: `CONTAINER_NAME`. Make sure that the container is empty. If it contains objects, Object Storage cannot delete the container.

- Set the `Content-Type` request header to `text/plain`.

## Bulk delete response

When Object Storage processes the request, it performs multiple sub-operations. Even if all sub-operations fail, the operation returns a 200 status. The bulk operation returns a response body that contains details that indicate which sub-operations have succeeded and failed. Some sub-operations might succeed while others fail. Examine the response body to determine the results of each delete sub-operation.

You can set the `Accept` request header to one of the following values to define the response format:

`text/plain`

  Formats response as plain text. If you omit the `Accept` header, `text/plain` is the default.

`application/json`

  Formats response as JSON.

`application/xml` or `text/xml`

  Formats response as XML.

The response body contains the following information:

- The number of files actually deleted.

- The number of not found objects.

- Errors. A list of object names and associated error statuses for the objects that failed to delete. The format depends on the value that you set in the `Accept` header.

The following bulk delete response is in `application/xml` format. In this example, the `mycontainer` container is not empty, so it cannot be deleted.

    <delete>
        <number_deleted>2</number_deleted>
        <number_not_found>4</number_not_found>
        <errors>
            <object>
                <name>/v1/12345678912345/mycontainer</name>
                <status>409 Conflict</status>
            </object>
        </errors>
    </delete>

this page last updated: 2026-04-08 16:47:21

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