Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

tsangk 02 Feb 2012 06:13

Hi all,

Just wondering if there's a way I can delete thousands of pages using the API. I've tried renaming all the pages as one page name (using the pages.save_one method) but it returned "Page with target name already exists". It would be extremely helpful if this is possible…

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Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

bcammo 02 Feb 2012 06:23

It depends on if you want to *delete* them, or are happy to just have them all in the deleted: category?

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BMC Creative | RoaringApps | @brycecammo

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

tsangk 02 Feb 2012 06:31

I need to *delete* them.

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Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

bcammo 02 Feb 2012 09:00

Hmm, I'm not sure if that's possible then.

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BMC Creative | RoaringApps | @brycecammo

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

Steven Heynderickx 02 Feb 2012 09:17

I once (a year ago or so) asked this directly at wikidot. It was not possible at the time and they were reluctant to change it. So I would think the best option would be to use the delete-category, and make sure it's a hidden or private category.

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A - S I M P L E - P L A N by ARTiZEN a startingpoint for simple wikidot solutions.

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

soronlin 03 Feb 2012 10:20

If you don't need to conserve page dates and authors…

• Create a new site
• Copy everything to the new site except the stuff you need to delete
• Delete the old site
• Create a new site with the same name. (Is that possible, I'm not sure.)
• Copy everything back.

I'm not really serious, but that's the only way I can think of of doing it.

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

Bland 03 Feb 2012 13:29

I don't think you can do any of that through the API, which was the original question.

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

tsangk 04 Feb 2012 09:55

Thanks Richard, I don't think that's good enough for me :P

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Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

soronlin 04 Feb 2012 21:27

@Bland, the two site copyings would be done using the API. The creation and deletion of sites would have to be manual.

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

pieterh 03 Feb 2012 21:25

Nope, not possible. It's kind of extremely annoying because you can trivially create thousands of pages and in effect destroy a working site. My workaround has been to email the Wikidot team to beg them to delete the pages manually, which they sometimes do. I'd recommend just asking for this feature repeatedly, it seems essential.

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Portfolio

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

tsangk 04 Feb 2012 09:54

Haha, thanks Pieter.

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Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

Bland 04 Feb 2012 15:44

• You can change the contents to being "nothing" (say, a single period).
• You can make the parent page to be "ToBeDeleted" so you can find these pages easy.
• You can rename it under a category, and use a _TEMPLATE page to put commands on it when you view the page. (I can't find anyway to have "Delete Page" at the top.)

That's the best we can do.

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

soronlin 04 Feb 2012 21:26

There's one other way it might be possible, and you're probably the best person to know.

If the pages were in a single category with simple names (like deleted:1 to deleted:1000), is it possible to build a robot to call the correct Ajax/Javascript functions to delete them?

Otherwise, would the dev team consider providing a manual method of deleting a whole category with a single defined name? I know the reason they don't want to is that people will do it by accident, but if the category was "trash:" and the manual interface was "Permanently Delete Trash", and asked twice if you were sure, surely that should be sufficient?

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

tsangk 04 Feb 2012 23:42

Thanks Richard!

I'll see if I can build such a robot. Although, it will violate the ToS of Wikidot :P

Prohibited content and usage

[…] 6. any automated use of the Services that is not officially available; this includes reading, posting or changing any Content, sending Messages and any other such use; this does not include RSS feeds access

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Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)

Re: Deleting thousands of pages effeciently

tsangk 06 Feb 2012 06:02

Hey all, I've taken Richard's suggestion and made a wish to permanently delete a certain category.

http://feedback.wikidot.com/wish:758

Please rate it up!

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Kenneth Tsang (@jxeeno)