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How to delete all assets within a folder?

Itay Taragano
Updated

Via API

You can use the Admin API to delete all assets contained within a specific folder, including sub-folders.

Here's an example in Node.js:

cloudinary.api.delete_resources_by_prefix('my_folder/', function(result){});

Please note that the / after my_folder needs to be included, as it is considered part of the prefix.
More information about the Admin API delete methods can be found in the Admin API documentation.

Via UI

1) Bulk Delete Tool

  1. Navigate to the bulk delete section found in the right navigation bar in your account settings view.
  2. Select the originals and derived resources option, then prefix as the Search by option. The prefix is the folder path followed by a slash / at the end e.g. folder1/folder2/.
  3. Select the specific resource_type and type of assets you want to delete.
  4. For those with automatic backups enabled, select whether you'd like to clear the backed up versions of the assets to be deleted.
  5. Click "Next"; you will be prompted to enter your password to submit the bulk delete request. An email notification will be sent once the process has completed.
    Screen Shot 2024-10-03 at 4.46.29 PM.png

2) Select and delete assets manually

To delete assets manually, you can do one of the following to select the assets to delete:

  • Option 1: bulk select assets by clicking the checkbox in the top left corner of an asset to designate a "starting point" , then hold down shift while clicking the checkbox of another asset to select that asset and every asset in between.
  • Option 2: click individual asset checkboxes to select them for deletion.

When the assets are selected, click on the Delete button in the toolbar.

Here is a short video demonstrating the above:

Note that if you have these assets backed up, this will only delete the original assets. For deleting backed up assets, please contact our support team and we'll be happy to assist.

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Comments

15 comments

Date Votes
  • Narayanan Raghavan

    Can you show us an example in Java?

    0
  • Lei Wang

    It (api.deleteResourcesByPrefix) does not work with Scala to delete a folder. Only "image" and "raw" can be defined to the resourceType. Does anyone have any idea?

    0
  • Maor Gariv

    Hi,

    Sorry for the very late reply, we have noticed that this request was left unattended. I guess this is not relevant anymore but for future reference -
    deleteResourcesByPrefix is meant to delete resources within a certain folder. Deleting the folders is currently not supported on our SDKs (it's currently on our road map). Please note that you can delete empty folders using the console.

    0
  • Amit

    works great.

    0
  • Gar

    Hello,

    Fast forward to March 2019. Is it possible to now delete the folder as well. Currently it only deletes files inside the  'mySubfolder' folder. Leaving an empty folder behind seems incomplete for what I'm trying to do.

    cloudinary.api.delete_resources_by_prefix('myMainFolder/mySubfolder', ()=>{ console.log("I want to delete mySubfolder as well") })
     
    Thank you.
     
    1
  • Stephen Doyle

    Hi Gar,

    You can make a second call to remove the folders, there's an API method for this but it doesn't currently have a corresponding helper method in the SDKs - the HTTP endpoint is an HTTP DELETE call to

    `<API key>:<API_SECRET>@https://api.cloudinary.com/v1_1/<cloud_name>/folders/<folder> `

    You can use that to delete the empty folders. There's a task on our roadmap to add this to the SDK directly, but I'm afraid I don't have an ETA for when it will be available

    0
  • Gar

    Hi Stephen,

    Thanks for getting back. I'm not very familiar with how to implement your solution. Do I do this in the Terminal? 

    I would like to perform the delete folder on the server using Node. Is that possible? If so can you provide a snippet please?

     

    Thanks,
    Gar

     

    0
  • Stephen Doyle

    Hi Gar,

    There isn't a specific method for this in our Node SDK yet, but you can call the endpoint directly using any HTTP library of your choice. 


    For example, with the 'request' module ( https://github.com/request ), you can delete an empty folder like this:

    util = require('util');
    request = require('request');

    var cloud_name = '';
    var api_key = '';
    var api_secret = '';
    var folder = 'myMainFolder/mySubfolder';

    var url = util.format("https://api.cloudinary.com/v1_1/%s/folders/%s", cloud_name, folder);

    request.delete(url, {
      auth: {
        user: api_key,
        pass: api_secret,
        sendImmediately: false
      },
      json: true
    }, function(error, response, body) {
         console.log(error, response, body);
    });


    When I tested this, the 'body; output was:

    deleted: [ 'tmp/folders/delete' ]
    2
  • Gar

    Amazing!!!!

    Tried it and it works. Thanks so much Stephen!

    0
  • Stephen Doyle

    You're welcome; if you need anything else please let me know, and you can always open a support ticket for my team directly via http://support.cloudinary.com

    1
  • mike

    @Stephen Doyle  Thank you!  Best solid node.js answer I could find online.  Thank you again. 

    0
  • Dhyey Thumar

    Does this work for all type of assets inside a folder? Because for me it only deleted images and not the raw or video files inside the same folder.

    0
  • Zachary Gould

    @Dhyey Image will be the default and you'll need to specify for other types. Via our documentation:

    Relevant as a parameter only when using the SDKs (the resource_type is included in the endpoint URL when using the REST API). Note: use video for all video and audio assets, such as .mp3. Possible values: image (default), raw, video.

    Read More…

     

    0
  • Dhyey Thumar
    Edited

    @Zachary thanks for the response, initially I thought “all” param would do the trick to remove all type of assets but ok got it that I would need to fire the query for each asset type individually.

    0
  • Zachary Gould

    No problem happy to help, also feel free to reach out via https://support.cloudinary.com/hc/en-us/requests/new if you have any additional problems

    0

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