When entities are deleted, The Things Stack retains some IDs by default to prevent another user re-registering the ID and obtaining historical data. Deleted entities can be restored within a limited time period, but it is also possible for administrators to purge these entities, so that their IDs may be reused.
This reference contains information about how to do delete, restore and purge entities.
Note:
End devices cannot be soft deleted, i.e. once they are deleted, they cannot be restored anymore. Hence, information below regarding restoring and manual purging refers to other entities - applications, gateways, clients, users and organizations.Deleting and Restoring Entities
Go to the General Settings tab of the entity and click Delete.
If you are an administrator, you will also be presented with the option to purge the entity. For implications of purging entities and other details, check sections below.
To delete an end device (keep in mind the note above!):
ttn-lw-cli applications delete --application-id <application-id> --device-id <device-id>
To delete an application:
ttn-lw-cli applications delete --application-id <application-id>
To delete a client:
ttn-lw-cli clients delete --client-id <client-id>
To delete a gateway:
# By EUI
ttn-lw-cli gateways delete --gateway-eui <gateway-eui>
# Or by ID
ttn-lw-cli gateways delete --gateway-id <gateway-id>
To delete an organization:
ttn-lw-cli organizations delete --organization-id <organization-id>
To delete a user:
ttn-lw-cli users delete --user-id <user-id>
When entities are deleted from The Things Stack Cloud, there is a default time period of 24h when an administrator can restore them. If restoration is attempted after these 24h, the following error will occur:
error:pkg/identityserver:restore_window_expired (this entity can no longer be restored)
In this case, entity can only be purged by an administrator and then recreated.
For The Things Stack Enterprise deployments, it is possible to configure the restoration period. For more info, check Identity Server Options.
Note again that restoring entities is not possible if they have been purged.
To restore an entity using the Console, navigate to the Deleted (Admin) tab for the entity of interest, and click Restore.
delete with restore in commands presented above.
What Happens to Purged Entities?
Only administrators may purge entities. Purging an entity has the following effects:
- Permanently deletes the entity
- Permanently deletes collaborator rights related to the entity (does not apply to users as they do not have collaborators)
- Permanently deletes API keys related to the entity (does not apply to OAuth clients as they do not have API keys)
- Does not delete stored data in routing clusters (only in the Identity Server)
- Does not delete stored events (hence these can be recovered by re-registering the ID)
- Does not delete information stored in Packet Broker (applies to gateways)
- Does not delete stored data in the storage integration (applies to applications)
- Does not delete stored data in external integrations (applies to applications)
- Releases the ID of the entity for re-use, which may give other users access to historical data if they register an entity with the same ID
Warning:
Purging entites deletes them permanently and is irreversible!How to Purge Entities
Purging entities using the Console or the CLI is usually most convenient, so those methods are explained in this section.
There are two ways to purge an entity:
- Go to the General Settings tab of the entity and click Delete. If you are an administrator, you will be presented with the option to purge the entity. Check the Also release entity IDs box to also purge the entity.
- After soft-deleting the entity with Delete, navigate to the Deleted (Admin) panel (the same panel where you restore entities), find your deleted entity and click Purge.
To purge an application:
ttn-lw-cli applications purge --application-id <application-id>
To purge a client:
ttn-lw-cli clients purge --client-id <client-id>
To purge a gateway:
# By EUI
ttn-lw-cli gateways purge --gateway-eui <gateway-eui>
# Or by ID
ttn-lw-cli gateways purge --gateway-id <gateway-id>
To purge an organization:
ttn-lw-cli organizations purge --organization-id <organization-id>
To purge a user:
ttn-lw-cli users purge --user-id <user-id>