How to remove all documents in index

Question

Is there any simple way to remove all documents (or a filtered list or documents) from an Azure search index?

I know the obvious answer is to delete and recreate the index, but I'm wondering if there is any other option.

Answer 1

No, currently there's no way to delete all the documents from an index. As you suspected deleting and re-creating the index is the way to go. For really small indexes you could consider deleting documents individually but given that often apps have code for index creation already, delete/recreate is the quickest path.

Answer 2

There is a way: query all documents, and use IndexBatch to delete these guys.

    public void DeleteAllDocuments()
    {
        // Get index
        SearchIndexClient indexClient = new SearchIndexClient(SearchServiceName, SearchServiceIndex, new SearchCredentials(SearchServiceQueryApiKey));

        // Query all
        DocumentSearchResult<Document> searchResult;
        try
        {
            searchResult = indexClient.Documents.Search<Document>(string.Empty);
        }
        catch (Exception ex)
        {
            throw new Exception("Error during AzureSearch");
        }

        List<string> azureDocsToDelete =
            searchResult
                .Results
                .Select(r => r.Document["id"].ToString())
                .ToList();

        // Delete all
        try
        {
            IndexBatch batch = IndexBatch.Delete("id", azureDocsToDelete);
            var result = indexClient.Documents.Index(batch);
        }
        catch (IndexBatchException ex)
        {
            throw new Exception($"Failed to delete documents: {string.Join(", ", ex.IndexingResults.Where(r => !r.Succeeded).Select(r => r.Key))}");
        }
    }

Answer 3

    //searchIndex - Index Name
    //KeyCol - Key column in the index
    public static void ResetIndex(string searchIndex, string KeyCol)
    {
        while (true)
        {
            SearchIndexClient indexClient = new SearchIndexClient(searchServiceName, searchIndex, new SearchCredentials(apiKey));
            DocumentSearchResult<Document> searchResult = indexClient.Documents.Search<Document>(string.Empty);
            List<string> azureDocsToDelete =
            searchResult
                .Results
                .Select(r => r.Document[KeyCol].ToString())
                .ToList();
            if(azureDocsToDelete.Count != 0)
            {
                try
                {
                    IndexBatch batch = IndexBatch.Delete(KeyCol, azureDocsToDelete);
                    var result = indexClient.Documents.Index(batch);
                }
                catch (IndexBatchException ex)
                {
                    throw new Exception($"Failed to reset the index: {string.Join(", ", ex.IndexingResults.Where(r => !r.Succeeded).Select(r => r.Key))}");
                }
            }
            else
            {
                break;
            }
        }
    }