Deleting an item

[ChrisMash]

Hi,
I'm trying to delete a record with the API, following the docs here. They just say to call DELETE .../book/sheet/record but I get a 400 response from the API stating 'invalid json, empty body'... so is there some json I should also be providing?

[ChrisMash]

Just tried sending "{}" as the body and that worked, a bit odd though?

[ChrisMash]

I've tried deleting items created through the API that have their ID set to 'Record X'. Sending it to the API as 'record_x' didn't work as the API wants a number and changing it to 'x' seemed to work (returned 204) but it's still there on a refresh....

[jasoncrawford]

Regarding the “invalid JSON”, are you sending a Content-Type: application/json header with the DELETE request? I think if you do that, it expects a JSON body, and an empty body is not valid JSON. That's why the {} body works. A cleaner solution, I think, is to omit the Content-Type header.

[jasoncrawford]

Regarding IDs: The API thinks about record IDs as just integers. If you're seeing record bodies that include id: "Record 3" or something similar, it's probably because you have an column in your sheet named “ID”. This will shadow the real ID. The best thing to do is to name that column something else. (Sorry, this is a bit awkward, and we'll come up with a better solution in the future.)

[jasoncrawford]

The record should be gone from the sheet after you delete it, though. When you say “still there on a refresh”, are you refreshing the sheet view? The record detail page? What exactly?

[ChrisMash]

Yep sending json content type with all requests. Works with the GET request but did wonder if the DELETE was getting confused by that. I'll probably remove it where it's not necessary (making an iOS SDK incidentally, will tell you when it's usable!)

You're right that I have an ID field... For no reason at all.... Especially seeing as there's an underlying one. Probably best to prevent people naming their columns the same as any under the hood for now at least! Or maybe the special Id should be named something like fieldbook_id? Not necessarily an easy change though!

I'll get rid of my id column and see if that works better! Thanks for the help!

[ChrisMash]

Yep, the advice was good, all sorted now!

[jasoncrawford]

Great! Yes, we plan to have a better way to deal with conflicting field names in the future. For now, if you're using the API, just avoid having an “ID” field.