Deleting Tasks and Queues

This page describes how to delete tasks from a push queue and how to delete queues. In some cases you might need to delete a task that cannot be completed successfully, no matter how many times it is retried.

Deleting tasks from a queue

API

Use deleteTask()) to delete an individual task:

// Delete an individual task...
Queue q = QueueFactory.getQueue("queue1");
q.deleteTask("foo")

Console

To delete a task from the Cloud Console:

  1. Open the Task queues page in the console"

    Go to the Task queues page

  2. Click the name of the queue from which you want to remove the task.

  3. Select the task that you want to delete and click Delete selected tasks.

    The Delete selected tasks button is the last in the list of actions at the top right of the page.

  4. Click Delete.

Purging all tasks from a queue

API

Use purge()) to delete all tasks from the specified queue:

// Purge entire queue...
Queue queue = QueueFactory.getQueue("foo");
queue.purge();

Console

To delete a task from the Cloud Console:

  1. Open the Task queues page in the console"

    Go to the Task queues page

  2. Click the name of the queue from which you want to remove the task.

  3. Select the task that you want to delete and click Delete all tasks.

    The Delete all tasks button purges all tasks from the queue.

  4. Click Delete.

All tasks created before the moment of purging are expunged. Purge operations can take up to one minute to take effect.

It can take several hours to reclaim the quotas freed up by purging a queue.

Pausing queues

You can pause a queue by removing its definition from your queue.yaml file and then uploading the edited queue.yaml file. Setting any queue's rate to 0 will also pause the queue.

Any tasks that remain on a paused queue or any new tasks that are added to it will not be processed. You can resume the paused queue by uploading a new queue.yaml file with the queue defined and rate set to a non-zero value. Paused queues continue to count as a part of your quota.

You can also pause a queue from within the Task queues page in the Cloud Console

Deleting queues

It is a best practice to pause a queue before you delete it:

  1. Remove the queue definition from your queue.yaml file.

  2. Upload the change to your queue.yaml file.

gcloud/yaml 

gcloud app deploy queue.yaml

appcfg/xml 

[PATH_TO_APP_ENGINE_SDK]\bin\appcfg.sh update_queues [YOUR_APP_DIR]

or on Windows:

[PATH_TO_APP_ENGINE_SDK]\bin\appcfg.cmd update_queues [YOUR_APP_DIR]

Once the queue is removed from your queue.yaml file, use the Cloud Console to delete it.

  1. In the Cloud Console, select the queue.

    Go to the Task queues page

  2. Click Delete queue.

If you delete a queue from the Cloud Console, you must wait 7 days before recreating with the same name.