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DELETE request method

files/en-us/web/http/reference/methods/delete/index.md

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The DELETE HTTP method asks the server to delete a specified resource.

Requests using DELETE should only be used to delete data and shouldn't contain a body.

[!NOTE] The semantics of sending a message body in DELETE requests are undefined. Some servers may reject the request with a 4XX client error response.

<table class="properties"> <tbody> <tr> <th scope="row">Request has body</th> <td>No</td> </tr> <tr> <th scope="row">Successful response has body</th> <td>May</td> </tr> <tr> <th scope="row">{{Glossary("Safe/HTTP", "Safe")}}</th> <td>No</td> </tr> <tr> <th scope="row">{{Glossary("Idempotent")}}</th> <td>Yes</td> </tr> <tr> <th scope="row">{{Glossary("Cacheable")}}</th> <td>No</td> </tr> <tr> <th scope="row"> Allowed in <a href="/en-US/docs/Learn_web_development/Extensions/Forms">HTML forms</a> </th> <td>No</td> </tr> </tbody> </table>

Syntax

http
DELETE <request-target>["?"<query>] HTTP/1.1
  • <request-target>
    • : Identifies the target resource of the request when combined with the information provided in the {{HTTPHeader("Host")}} header. This is an absolute path (e.g., /path/to/file.html) in requests to an origin server, and an absolute URL in requests to proxies (e.g., http://www.example.com/path/to/file.html).
  • <query> {{optional_inline}}
    • : An optional query component preceded by a question-mark ?. Often used to carry identifying information in the form of key=value pairs.

Examples

Successfully deleting a resource

The following request asks the server to delete the resource file.html:

http
DELETE /file.html HTTP/1.1
Host: example.com

If the request is successful, there are several possible successful response status codes. A {{HTTPStatus("204", "204 No Content")}} response means the request was successful and no additional information needs to be sent back to the client:

http
HTTP/1.1 204 No Content
Date: Wed, 04 Sep 2024 10:16:04 GMT

A {{HTTPStatus("200", "200 OK")}} response means the request was successful and the response body includes a representation describing the outcome:

http
HTTP/1.1 200 OK
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Date: Fri, 21 Jun 2024 14:18:33 GMT
Content-Length: 1234

<html lang="en-US">
  <body>
    <h1>File "file.html" deleted.</h1>
  </body>
</html>

A {{HTTPStatus("202", "202 Accepted")}} response means the request has been accepted and will probably succeed, but the resource has not yet been deleted by the server.

http
HTTP/1.1 202 Accepted
Date: Wed, 26 Jun 2024 12:00:00 GMT
Content-Type: text/html; charset=UTF-8
Content-Length: 1234

<html lang="en-US">
  <body>
    <h1>Deletion of "file.html" accepted.</h1>
    <p>See <a href="http://example.com/tasks/123/status">the status monitor</a> for details.</p>
  </body>
</html>

Specifications

{{Specifications}}

Browser compatibility

The browser doesn't use the DELETE method for user-initiated actions, so "browser compatibility" doesn't apply. Developers can set this request method using fetch().

See also