Delete Activity

[mhoad]

The Delete activity is used to delete an already existing object. The side effect of this is that the server MAY replace the object with a Tombstone of the object that will be displayed in activities which reference the deleted object. If the deleted object is requested the server SHOULD respond with either the HTTP 410 Gone status code if a Tombstone object is presented as the response body, otherwise respond with a HTTP 404 Not Found.

Delete Activity - Reference

Indicates that the actor has deleted the object. If specified, the origin indicates the context from which the object was deleted.

Example Delete Activity 1

{
  "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "summary": "Sally deleted a note",
  "type": "Delete",
  "actor": {
    "type": "Person",
    "name": "Sally"
  },
  "object": "http://example.org/notes/1",
  "origin": {
    "type": "Collection",
    "name": "Sally's Notes"
  }
}

Tombstone Object - Reference

A Tombstone represents a content object that has been deleted. It can be used in Collections to signify that there used to be an object at this position, but it has been deleted.

Example Tombstone 1

{
  "@context": "https://www.w3.org/ns/activitystreams",
  "id": "https://example.com/~alice/note/72",
  "type": "Tombstone",
  "published": "2015-02-10T15:04:55Z",
  "updated": "2015-02-10T15:04:55Z",
  "deleted": "2015-02-10T15:04:55Z"
}

Example Tombstone 2

{
  "type": "OrderedCollection",
  "totalItems": 3,
  "name": "Vacation photos 2016",
  "orderedItems": [
    {
      "type": "Image",
      "id": "http://image.example/1"
    },
    {
      "type": "Tombstone",
      "formerType": "Image",
      "id": "http://image.example/2",
      "deleted": "2016-03-17T00:00:00Z"
    },
    {
      "type": "Image",
      "id": "http://image.example/3"
    }
  ]
}