ArangoDB v3.13 is under development and not released yet. This documentation is not final and potentially incomplete.

Working with TTL (time-to-live) indexes

Create a TTL index

POST /_db/{database-name}/_api/index
Creates a time-to-live (TTL) index for the collection collection-name if it does not already exist. The call expects an object containing the index details.
Path Parameters

  • The name of the database.

Query Parameters

  • The collection name.

HTTP Headers
    Request Body application/json object

    • The time interval (in seconds) from the point in time stored in the fields attribute after which the documents count as expired. Can be set to 0 to let documents expire as soon as the server time passes the point in time stored in the document attribute, or to a higher number to delay the expiration.

    • an array with exactly one attribute path.

    • You can set this option to true to create the index in the background, which will not write-lock the underlying collection for as long as if the index is built in the foreground. The default value is false.

    • An easy-to-remember name for the index to look it up or refer to it in index hints. Index names are subject to the same character restrictions as collection names. If omitted, a name is auto-generated so that it is unique with respect to the collection, e.g. idx_832910498.

    • must be equal to "ttl".

    Responses

    • If the index already exists, then a HTTP 200 is returned.

    • If the index does not already exist and could be created, then a HTTP 201 is returned.

    • If the collection already contains another TTL index, then an HTTP 400 is returned, as there can be at most one TTL index per collection.

    • If the collection-name is unknown, then a HTTP 404 is returned.

    Examples

    Creating a TTL index

    curl -X POST --header 'accept: application/json' --data-binary @- --dump - http://localhost:8529/_api/index?collection=sessions
{
  "type": "ttl",
  "expireAfter": 3600,
  "fields": [
    "createdAt"
  ]
}
    Show output