Amazon Simple Storage Service
Developer Guide (API Version 2006-03-01)
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Deleting Object Versions

A DELETE request has the following use cases:

  • When versioning is enabled, a simple DELETE cannot permanently delete an object.

    Instead, Amazon S3 inserts a delete marker in the bucket and that becomes the latest version of the object with a new ID. When you try to GET an object whose latest version is a delete marker, Amazon S3 behaves as though the object has been deleted (even though it has not been erased) and returns a 404 error.

  • To permanently delete versioned objects, you must use DELETE Object versionId.

The following figure shows that a simple DELETE does not actually remove the specified object. Instead, Amazon S3 inserts a delete marker.

The following figure shows that deleting a specified object version permanently removes that object.

To a delete a specific version of an object

  • In a DELETE request specify a version ID.

Example Deleting a Specific Version

The following example shows how to delete version UIORUnfnd89493jJFJ of photo.gif.

DELETE /photo.gif?versionId=UIORUnfnd89493jJFJ HTTP/1.1 
Host: bucket.s3.amazonaws.com
Date: Wed, 12 Oct 2009 17:50:00 GMT
Authorization: AWS AKIAIOSFODNN7EXAMPLE:xQE0diMbLRepdf3YB+FIEXAMPLE=
Content-Type: text/plain
Content-Length: 0