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.

Disabling queues

You can disable, or pause, a queue by removing its definition from your queue.yaml file and then uploading the edited queue.yaml file.

If you disable a queue by omitting it from the queue.yaml and uploading the changed file, the queue is set to "disabled" and its rate is set to 0. Any tasks that remain on the queue or new tasks that are added to the queue will not be processed. You can re-enable the disabled queue by uploading a new queue.yaml file with the queue defined. Disabled 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

To delete a queue you must first disable 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 disabled, 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.