Delete messages

delete() either permanently removes a historical message from Message Persistence or marks it as deleted (if you remove the message with the soft option).

Requires Message Persistence configuration

To manage messages, you must enable Message Persistence for your app's keyset in the Admin Portal. To delete messages from PubNub storage, you must also mark the Enable Delete-From-History option.

Method signature

Under the hood

This method takes the following parameters:

message.delete(
    {
        soft?: boolean
    },
    preserveFiles?: boolean
): Promise<true | Message>

Input

Parameter	Type	Required	Default	Description
soft	boolean	No	false	Define if you want to permanently remove message data. By default, the message data gets permanently deleted from Message Persistence. If you set this parameter to true, the Message object gets the deleted status and you can still restore/get its data.
preserveFiles	boolean	No	n/a	Define if you want to keep the files attached to the message or remove them.

Output

Type	Description
Promise<true> or Promise<Message>	For hard delete, a confirmation that the message data was permanently deleted. For soft delete, an updated message instance with an added deleted action type.

Basic usage

Permanently delete the message with the 16200000000000001 timetoken from the support channel.

// reference the "message" object
const message = await channel.getHistory({
    startTimetoken: "16200000000000000",
    endTimetoken: "162000000000000001"
})
// invoke the "delete()" method. By default, the "soft" parameter is set to "false" and can be skipped.
await message.delete()

Other examples

Archive (soft delete) the message with the 16200000000000001 timetoken from the support channel, keeping its data in Message Persistence.

await message.delete({
    soft: true
})