Is there any way to delete nodes in a mutation where you update other nodes

[vespertilian (Cameron Batt)]

I am currently writing the backend for my app, it has a screen, where you can add or remove websites. The websites have a webProperty predicate.

Data structure:

          {
            "websiteUserValue": "vespertilian",
            "webProperty": [
              {
                "webPropertyName": "Twitter",
                "uid": "0x191ab"
              }
            ],
            "uid": "0x191b3"
          },

Is there a way when I am updating the list I can add new nodes and delete nodes with the one command?

Currently I believe I have to run a mu.setSetJson to add elements, and a seperate mu.setDeleteJson as part of the same transaction.

It would be nice if I could append metadata and DGraph would just do this as part of one mutation:

Something like this:
where you have a special ___dgraph operator

websites: [
{
   uid: "0x235"
   __dgraph: {delete: {depth: 1}}
}
{
   websiteUserValue: "vespertilian"
   webProperty:  {
     uid: "0x245"
     __dgraph: {validatePredicates: ["webPropertyName"]}
   }
}
]

What do you think?

This expands upon ideas from my last post:

Validate nodes when linking them - questions and feature suggestion

There is a question in here, also I plan to add this as a feature request, GitHub mentioned I should write it up here first. I have a website node that two predicates a websiteUserValue: string and webProperty: node. When creating a website I always want to link to a valid webProperty by passing in the webProperty UID. Should end up with something like this: { "websiteUserValue": "vespertilian", "webProperty": [ { "webPropertyNa…

Thanks
Cam

[MichelDiz]

@vespertilian

Currently I believe I have to run a mu.setSetJson to add elements, and a seperate mu.setDeleteJson as part of the same transaction.

That’s correct.

@vespertilian

It would be nice if I could append metadata and DGraph would just do this as part of one mutation:

Mutation is a different from deletion operation. It is possible to merge, but very infeasible in the medium term. It may never be supported for being complex (due to transactions feature) and very simple to handle via client application.

One thing you can do is create a “Deleted” Label via mutation. Thus the node is not actually deleted, but identified as something to be deleted by application. After that you can create a worker to hunt these nodes and then delete them in a single operation.

And your queries you can always add a filter with “@filter(NOT has(Deleted))”.

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