How to remove users with the GraphQL API

This document walk you through the steps of removing users with the GraphQL API.

Prerequisites

  • This document assumes that you have site-admin level permissions on your Sourcegraph instance
  • Assumes that you have set up your query token via the steps here

Steps to remove a user

There are two different options for removing a user:

Option A) Deleting a user: the user and all associated data is marked as deleted in the DB and never served again. You could undo this by running DB commands manually.

Option B) Nuking a user: the user and all associated data is deleted forever. Note: You cannot undo this and this is considered the less safe option.

First, query the user’s ID by using their email address or user name

Example:

{
  user(email: "someone@gmail.com") {
    id
  }
}

{
  user(username: "username") {    
  id
  }
}

Next, plug the user ID into either Option A. or B. to delete the account.

Option A) example:

mutation {
  deleteUser(user: "THE_USER_ID") {
    alwaysNil
  }
}

Option B) example, include hard: true:

mutation {
  deleteUser(user: "THE_USER_ID" hard: true) {
    alwaysNil
  }
}

Optional step: Recheck the delete worked by running the query from step #1. again. If the results are “user not found:…” then it worked.

Example:

{
  "errors": [
    {
      "message": "user not found: [someone@gmail.com]",
      "path": [
        "user"
      ]
    }
  ],
  "data": {
    "user": null
  }
}

Further resources