Bulk operations_

Perform bulk operations on documents within your collections for efficient data handling.

3 min read

Appwrite DocumentsDB supports bulk operations for documents, allowing you to create, update, or delete multiple documents in a single request. This can significantly improve performance for apps as it allows you to reduce the number of API calls needed while working with large data sets.

Bulk operations can only be performed via the server-side SDKs. The client-side SDKs do not support bulk operations by design to prevent abuse and protect against unexpected costs. This ensures that only trusted server environments can perform large-scale data operations.

For client applications that need bulk-like functionality, consider using Appwrite Functions with proper rate limiting and validation.

Important notes

Bulk operations trigger Functions, Webhooks, or Realtime events for each document manipulated. Rather than a single event for the entire bulk operation, each document generates a separate event on the existing realtime channels for its operation type.

Atomic behavior

Bulk operations in Appwrite are atomic, meaning they follow an all-or-nothing approach. Either all documents in your bulk request succeed, or all documents fail.

This atomicity ensures:

Data consistency: Your database remains in a consistent state even if some operations would fail.
Race condition prevention: Multiple clients can safely perform bulk operations simultaneously.
Simplified error handling: You only need to handle complete success or complete failure scenarios.

For example, if you attempt to create 100 documents and one fails due to a validation error, none of the 100 documents will be created.

Plan limits

Bulk operations have different limits based on your Appwrite plan:

Plan	Documents per request
Free	100
Pro	1,000

These limits apply to all bulk operations including create, update, upsert, and delete operations. If you need higher limits than what the Pro plan offers, you can inquire about a custom plan.

Create documents

You can create multiple documents in a single request using the createDocuments method.

Custom timestamps

When creating, updating or upserting in bulk, you can set $createdAt and $updatedAt for each document in the payload. Values must be ISO 8601 date-time strings. If omitted, Appwrite sets them automatically.

Update documents

Permissions required

You must grant update permissions to users at the collection level before users can update documents. Learn more about permissions

You can update multiple documents in a single request using the updateDocuments method.

Upsert documents

Permissions required

You must grant create and update permissions to users at the collection level before users can create documents. Learn more about permissions

You can upsert multiple documents in a single request using the upsertDocuments method.

Delete documents

Permissions required

You must grant delete permissions to users at the collection level before users can delete documents. Learn more about permissions

You can delete multiple documents in a single request using the deleteDocuments method.

Queries for deletion

When deleting documents, you must specify queries to filter which documents to delete. If no queries are provided, all documents in the collection will be deleted. Learn more about queries.

Use transactions

All bulk operations accept transactionId. When provided, Appwrite stages the bulk request and applies it on commit. See Transactions.

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