Deleting objects from script

1

Is it possible to use plone.api from a script to delete content items?
If so: why this is not working (the items are found, but not deleted)

# bin/instance run  find_macfiles.py -O skipshistorie
import plone.api
from zope.component.hooks import setSite 

setSite(app['skipshistorie'])

for brain in app.skipshistorie.portal_catalog(id="ds_store"):
    obj= brain.getObject()
    plone.api.content.delete(obj)
2

transaction.commit() ?

1 Like
3

Thanks,

I add it here for later reference

    # bin/instance run  find_macfiles.py -O skipshistorie
    import plone.api
    from zope.component.hooks import setSite 
    setSite(app['mysite'])
    import transaction ;

    for brain in app.mysite.portal_catalog(id="ds_store"):
        obj= brain.getObject()
        print('deleting')

        try:
            #Below line needs a transaction to actually delete the object 
            plone.api.content.delete(obj)
            
        except Exception as e:
            print(f"Error deleting object {obj.absolute_url()}: {e}")

    transaction.commit()
4

In principle you shouldn't do a transaction.commit() in the loop, only at the end. If you have a huge number of items, you can do a transaction.savepoint() each (maybe) 100 loops, to save on memory.

2 Likes
5

You could try plone.api.portal.get() to see if the site is set correctly.

Side note: you can also use plone.api.content.find(id='ds_store') instead of using the portal_catalog directly.

6

Exactly. If everything works well, commit at the end of the script.
Otherwise, the transaction will be rolled back completely. Such scripts
should run in one transaction - either everything works and the transaction can be committed, otherwise no changes should be committed.

A transaction.savepoint() after N changes might be useful if you modify a bunch a lot of objects in order to snapshot the changes on disk rather than in RAM.

You may also transction.doom() a transaction. In case of an error, you can either raise an exception or mark the transaction as doomed...this means that you may continue with the execution of your code. However, you will never be able to successfully commit the current transaction if marked as doomed earlier (kind of a safety belt).

2 Likes
8

Sorry for the bad example. I was putting it wrongly here trying to 'show that a needed be, I will update