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

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["5cb3a95e-4aac-434d-81ba-7c242fd245aa"]

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

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

item.affiliations = []

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

dsms.add(item)
dsms.commit()

See the changes:

item

kitem:
  id: 5cb3a95e-4aac-434d-81ba-7c242fd245aa
  name: Specimen-123
  ktype_id: specimen
  slug: specimen123-5cb3a95e
  annotations: []
  attachments:
  - name: testfile.txt
  linked_kitems: []
  affiliations: []
  authors:
  - user_id: 7f0e5a37-353b-4bbc-b1f1-b6ad575f562d
  avatar_exists: false
  contacts:
  - name: Specimen preparation
    email: specimenpreparation@group.mail
  created_at: 2025-08-13 14:29:01.826691
  updated_at: 2025-08-13 14:30:26.915234
  external_links:
  - label: specimen-link
    url: http://specimens.org
  apps: []
  user_groups: []
  custom_properties:
    content:
      sections:
      - id: idb424123144cdd8
        name: Untitled Section
        entries:
        - id: id6c76bbffe7ca78
          type: Number
          label: Width
          value: 1
          measurementUnit:
            iri: http://qudt.org/vocab/unit/MilliM
            label: Millimetre
            symbol: null
            namespace: http://qudt.org/vocab/unit
          relationMapping: null
          required: false
        - id: id717d07130a7618
          type: Slider
          label: Length
          value:
          - 0.1
          - 0.2
          measurementUnit:
            iri: http://qudt.org/vocab/unit/MilliM
            label: Millimetre
            symbol: null
            namespace: http://qudt.org/vocab/unit
          relationMapping: null
          required: false
  rdf_exists: true
  contexts: []

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.