4. Deleting KItems with the SDK

In this tutorial we see how to delete new Kitems and their properties.

4.1. Setting up

Before you run this tutorial: make sure to have access to a DSMS-instance of your interest, alongwith with installation of this package and have establised access to the DSMS through DSMS-SDK (refer to Connecting to DSMS)

Now let us import the needed classes and functions for this tutorial.

from dsms import DSMS, KItem

Now source the environmental variables from an .env file and start the DSMS-session.

dsms = DSMS(env=".env")

Then lets see the Kitem we are interested in to remove.

item = dsms.get_kitems(limit=100)[-1]

4.2. Deletion of KItems and their properties

We can also remove properties from the KItem without deleting the KItem itself.

For the list-like properties, we can use the standard list-methods from basic Python again (e.g. pop, remove, etc. or the del-operator).

For the other, non-list-like properties, we can simply use the attribute-assignment again.

When we only want single parts of the properties in the KItem, we can do it like this:

item.attachments.pop(0)
item.annotations.pop(0)
item.external_links.pop(0)
item.contacts.pop(0)

contact:
  name: Specimen preparation
  email: specimenpreparation@group.mail
  user_id: null

However, we can also reset the entire property by setting it to e.g. an empty list again:

item.affiliations = []

We can delete the custom properties by setting the property to an empty dict:

item.custom_properties = {}

/app/dsms/knowledge/kitem.py:570: UserWarning: A flat dictionary was provided for custom properties.
                    Will be transformed into `KItemCustomPropertiesModel`.
  warnings.warn(

Send the changes to the DSMS with the commit-method:

dsms.commit()

See the changes:

item

kitem:
  name: Specimen-123
  id: 8ba20087-210d-482c-a847-6f80c20b7d51
  ktype_id: specimen
  in_backend: true
  slug: specimen123-8ba20087
  annotations: []
  attachments:
  - name: testfile.txt
    content: null
  linked_kitems: []
  affiliations: []
  authors:
  - user_id: 7f0e5a37-353b-4bbc-b1f1-b6ad575f562d
  avatar_exists: false
  contacts:
  - name: Specimen preparation
    email: specimenpreparation@group.mail
    user_id: null
  created_at: 2025-01-17 10:44:42.478274
  updated_at: 2025-01-17 10:51:55.054607
  external_links:
  - label: specimen-link
    url: http://specimens.org
  kitem_apps: []
  user_groups: []
  custom_properties:
    sections:
    - id: ida3c5c42685526
      name: Untitled Section
      entries:
      - id: id175f885f8dda58
        type: Slider
        label: Width
        value: 1
        measurement_unit:
          iri: http://qudt.org/vocab/unit/MilliM
          label: Millimetre
          namespace: http://qudt.org/vocab/unit
      - id: idef5a37328789f
        type: Slider
        label: Length
        value:
        - 0.1
        - 0.2
        measurement_unit:
          iri: http://qudt.org/vocab/unit/MilliM
          label: Millimetre
          namespace: http://qudt.org/vocab/unit
      - id: id54decb9641f9a
        type: Number
        label: Radius
        value: 10
        measurement_unit:
          iri: http://qudt.org/vocab/unit/MilliM
          label: Millimetre
          namespace: http://qudt.org/vocab/unit
  rdf_exists: true

However, we can also delete the whole KItem from the DSMS by applying the del-operator to the dsms-object with the individual KItem-object:

del dsms[item]

Commit the changes:

dsms.commit()

Now to check if the particular kitem was removed, we can do this by using the command: dsms.kitems or by logging into the frontend dsms instance.