Delete records in a REDCap project

Delete existing records by their ID from REDCap.

redcap_delete(
  redcap_uri,
  token,
  records_to_delete,
  arm_of_records_to_delete = NULL,
  verbose = TRUE,
  config_options = NULL,
  handle_httr = NULL
)

Arguments

redcap_uri

The uri/url of the REDCap server typically formatted as "https://server.org/apps/redcap/api/". Required.

token

The user-specific string that serves as the password for a project. Required.

records_to_delete

A character vector of the project's record_id values to delete. Required.

arm_of_records_to_delete

A single integer reflecting the arm containing the records to be deleted. Leave it as NULL if the project has no arms and is not longitudinal. Required if the REDCap project has arms. See Details below.

verbose

A boolean value indicating if messages should be printed to the R console during the operation. The verbose output might contain sensitive information (e.g. PHI), so turn this off if the output might be visible somewhere public. Optional.

config_options

A list of options passed to httr::POST(). See details at httr::httr_options(). Optional.

handle_httr

The value passed to the handle parameter of httr::POST(). This is useful for only unconventional authentication approaches. It should be NULL for most institutions. Optional.

Value

Currently, a list is returned with the following elements:

• success: A boolean value indicating if the operation was apparently successful.

• status_code: The http status code of the operation.

• outcome_message: A human readable string indicating the operation's outcome.

• records_affected_count: The number of records inserted or updated.

• elapsed_seconds: The duration of the function.

• raw_text: If an operation is NOT successful, the text returned by REDCap. If an operation is successful, the raw_text is returned as an empty string to save RAM.

Details

REDCap requires that at least one record_id value be passed to the delete call.

When the project has arms, REDCapR has stricter requirements than REDCap. If the REDCap project has arms, a value must be passed to arm_of_records_to_delete. This is a different behavior than calling the server through cURL --which if no arm number is specified, then all arms are cleared of the specified record_ids.

Note that all longitudinal projects technically have arms, even if only one arm is defined. Therefore a value of arm_number must be specified for all longitudinal projects.

References

The official documentation can be found on the 'API Help Page' and 'API Examples' pages on the REDCap wiki (i.e., https://community.projectredcap.org/articles/456/api-documentation.html and https://community.projectredcap.org/articles/462/api-examples.html). If you do not have an account for the wiki, please ask your campus REDCap administrator to send you the static material.

Author

Jonathan Mang, Will Beasley

Examples

if (FALSE) {
records_to_delete <- c(102, 103, 105, 120)

# Deleting from a non-longitudinal project with no defined arms:
REDCapR::redcap_delete(
  redcap_uri               = uri,
  token                    = token,
  records_to_delete        = records_to_delete,
)

# Deleting from a project that has arms or is longitudinal:
arm_number <- 2L # Not the arm name
REDCapR::redcap_delete(
  redcap_uri               = uri,
  token                    = token,
  records_to_delete        = records_to_delete,
  arm_of_records_to_delete = arm_number
)
}