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latestOpenAPI 3.0.0Apache 2.0 License2026-07-1453442446.0 KB

Deletes a single item in a table by primary key. You can perform a conditional delete operation that deletes the item if it exists, or if it has an expected attribute value.

In addition to deleting an item, you can also return the item's attribute values in the same operation, using the ReturnValues parameter.

Unless you specify conditions, the DeleteItem is an idempotent operation; running it multiple times on the same item or attribute does not result in an error response.

Conditional deletes are useful for deleting items only if specific conditions are met. If those conditions are met, DynamoDB performs the delete. Otherwise, the item is not deleted.

post/#X-Amz-Target=DynamoDB_20120810.DeleteItem

Headers

X-Amz-Target'DynamoDB_20120810.DeleteItem' required

Request body

TableNamestring required

The name of the table from which to delete the item.

Keyobject required
<p>A map of attribute names to <code>AttributeValue</code> objects, representing the primary key of the item to delete.</p> <p>For the primary key, you must provide all of the key attributes. For example, with a simple primary key, you only need to provide a value for the partition key. For a composite primary key, you must provide values for both the partition key and the sort key.</p>
Expectedobject

This is a legacy parameter. Use <code>ConditionExpression</code> instead. For more information, see <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/LegacyConditionalParameters.Expected.html">Expected</a> in the <i>Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide</i>.

ConditionalOperator'AND' | 'OR'

This is a legacy parameter. Use <code>ConditionExpression</code> instead. For more information, see <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/LegacyConditionalParameters.ConditionalOperator.html">ConditionalOperator</a> in the <i>Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide</i>.

ReturnValues'NONE' | 'ALL_OLD' | 'UPDATED_OLD' | 'ALL_NEW' | 'UPDATED_NEW'
<p>Use <code>ReturnValues</code> if you want to get the item attributes as they appeared before they were deleted. For <code>DeleteItem</code>, the valid values are:</p> <ul> <li> <p> <code>NONE</code> - If <code>ReturnValues</code> is not specified, or if its value is <code>NONE</code>, then nothing is returned. (This setting is the default for <code>ReturnValues</code>.)</p> </li> <li> <p> <code>ALL_OLD</code> - The content of the old item is returned.</p> </li> </ul> <p>There is no additional cost associated with requesting a return value aside from the small network and processing overhead of receiving a larger response. No read capacity units are consumed.</p> <note> <p>The <code>ReturnValues</code> parameter is used by several DynamoDB operations; however, <code>DeleteItem</code> does not recognize any values other than <code>NONE</code> or <code>ALL_OLD</code>.</p> </note>
ReturnConsumedCapacity'INDEXES' | 'TOTAL' | 'NONE'
<p>Determines the level of detail about either provisioned or on-demand throughput consumption that is returned in the response:</p> <ul> <li> <p> <code>INDEXES</code> - The response includes the aggregate <code>ConsumedCapacity</code> for the operation, together with <code>ConsumedCapacity</code> for each table and secondary index that was accessed.</p> <p>Note that some operations, such as <code>GetItem</code> and <code>BatchGetItem</code>, do not access any indexes at all. In these cases, specifying <code>INDEXES</code> will only return <code>ConsumedCapacity</code> information for table(s).</p> </li> <li> <p> <code>TOTAL</code> - The response includes only the aggregate <code>ConsumedCapacity</code> for the operation.</p> </li> <li> <p> <code>NONE</code> - No <code>ConsumedCapacity</code> details are included in the response.</p> </li> </ul>
ReturnItemCollectionMetrics'SIZE' | 'NONE'

Determines whether item collection metrics are returned. If set to <code>SIZE</code>, the response includes statistics about item collections, if any, that were modified during the operation are returned in the response. If set to <code>NONE</code> (the default), no statistics are returned.

ConditionExpressionstring
<p>A condition that must be satisfied in order for a conditional <code>DeleteItem</code> to succeed.</p> <p>An expression can contain any of the following:</p> <ul> <li> <p>Functions: <code>attribute_exists | attribute_not_exists | attribute_type | contains | begins_with | size</code> </p> <p>These function names are case-sensitive.</p> </li> <li> <p>Comparison operators: <code>= | &lt;&gt; | &lt; | &gt; | &lt;= | &gt;= | BETWEEN | IN </code> </p> </li> <li> <p> Logical operators: <code>AND | OR | NOT</code> </p> </li> </ul> <p>For more information about condition expressions, see <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/Expressions.SpecifyingConditions.html">Condition Expressions</a> in the <i>Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide</i>.</p>
ExpressionAttributeNamesobject
<p>One or more substitution tokens for attribute names in an expression. The following are some use cases for using <code>ExpressionAttributeNames</code>:</p> <ul> <li> <p>To access an attribute whose name conflicts with a DynamoDB reserved word.</p> </li> <li> <p>To create a placeholder for repeating occurrences of an attribute name in an expression.</p> </li> <li> <p>To prevent special characters in an attribute name from being misinterpreted in an expression.</p> </li> </ul> <p>Use the <b>#</b> character in an expression to dereference an attribute name. For example, consider the following attribute name:</p> <ul> <li> <p> <code>Percentile</code> </p> </li> </ul> <p>The name of this attribute conflicts with a reserved word, so it cannot be used directly in an expression. (For the complete list of reserved words, see <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/ReservedWords.html">Reserved Words</a> in the <i>Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide</i>). To work around this, you could specify the following for <code>ExpressionAttributeNames</code>:</p> <ul> <li> <p> <code>{"#P":"Percentile"}</code> </p> </li> </ul> <p>You could then use this substitution in an expression, as in this example:</p> <ul> <li> <p> <code>#P = :val</code> </p> </li> </ul> <note> <p>Tokens that begin with the <b>:</b> character are <i>expression attribute values</i>, which are placeholders for the actual value at runtime.</p> </note> <p>For more information on expression attribute names, see <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/Expressions.AccessingItemAttributes.html">Specifying Item Attributes</a> in the <i>Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide</i>.</p>
ExpressionAttributeValuesobject
<p>One or more values that can be substituted in an expression.</p> <p>Use the <b>:</b> (colon) character in an expression to dereference an attribute value. For example, suppose that you wanted to check whether the value of the <i>ProductStatus</i> attribute was one of the following: </p> <p> <code>Available | Backordered | Discontinued</code> </p> <p>You would first need to specify <code>ExpressionAttributeValues</code> as follows:</p> <p> <code>{ ":avail":{"S":"Available"}, ":back":{"S":"Backordered"}, ":disc":{"S":"Discontinued"} }</code> </p> <p>You could then use these values in an expression, such as this:</p> <p> <code>ProductStatus IN (:avail, :back, :disc)</code> </p> <p>For more information on expression attribute values, see <a href="https://docs.aws.amazon.com/amazondynamodb/latest/developerguide/Expressions.SpecifyingConditions.html">Condition Expressions</a> in the <i>Amazon DynamoDB Developer Guide</i>.</p>

Response

Success

Attributesobject

A map of attribute names to <code>AttributeValue</code> objects, representing the item as it appeared before the <code>DeleteItem</code> operation. This map appears in the response only if <code>ReturnValues</code> was specified as <code>ALL_OLD</code> in the request.

Example response

{
  "ConsumedCapacity": {
    "CapacityUnits": 1,
    "TableName": "Music"
  }
}