Delete topics

This document describes how to delete a Pub/Sub topic. To delete a topic you can use the Google Cloud console, the Google CLI, the client library, or the Pub/Sub API.

Before you begin

Learn about topics and the publish messages workflow.
Create a topic.

Required roles and permissions

To get the permissions that you need to delete topics and manage them, ask your administrator to grant you the Pub/Sub Editor(roles/pubsub.editor) IAM role on your topic or project. For more information about granting roles, see Manage access.

This predefined role contains the permissions required to delete topics and manage them. To see the exact permissions that are required, expand the Required permissions section:

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to delete topics and manage them:

Create a topic: pubsub.topics.create
Delete a topic: pubsub.topics.delete
Detach a subscription from a topic: pubsub.topics.detachSubscription
Get a topic: pubsub.topics.get
List a topic: pubsub.topics.list
Publish to a topic: pubsub.topics.publish
Update a topic: pubsub.topics.update
Get the IAM policy for a topic: pubsub.topics.getIamPolicy
Configure the IAM policy for a topic: pubsub.topics.setIamPolicy

You might also be able to get these permissions with custom roles or other predefined roles.

You can configure access control at the project level and at the individual resource level. You can create a subscription in one project and attach it to a topic located in a different project. Ensure that you have the required permissions for each project.

Delete a topic

When you delete a topic, its subscriptions are not deleted. The message backlog from the subscription is available for subscribers. After a topic is deleted, its subscriptions have the topic name _deleted-topic_. If you try to create a topic with the same name as the one you had just deleted, expect an error for a brief period.

Console

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Pub/Sub Topics page.

Go to Topics

Select a topic and click More actions.
Click Delete.

The Delete topic window appears.
Enter delete and then click Delete.

gcloud

In the Google Cloud console, activate Cloud Shell.

Activate Cloud Shell

At the bottom of the Google Cloud console, a Cloud Shell session starts and displays a command-line prompt. Cloud Shell is a shell environment with the Google Cloud CLI already installed and with values already set for your current project. It can take a few seconds for the session to initialize.
To delete a topic, use the gcloud pubsub topics delete command:
```
gcloud pubsub topics delete TOPIC_ID
```

REST

To delete a topic, use the projects.topics.delete method:

Request:

The request must be authenticated with an access token in the Authorization header. To obtain an access token for the current Application Default Credentials: gcloud auth application-default print-access-token.

DELETE https://pubsub.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/topics/TOPIC_ID
Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN

Where:

PROJECT_ID is your project ID.

TOPIC_ID is your topic ID.

Response:

If the request is successful, the response is an empty JSON object.

C++

Before trying this sample, follow the C++ setup instructions in the Pub/Sub quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub C++ API reference documentation.

To authenticate to Pub/Sub, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.

namespace pubsub = ::google::cloud::pubsub;
namespace pubsub_admin = ::google::cloud::pubsub_admin;
[](pubsub_admin::TopicAdminClient client, std::string const& project_id,
   std::string const& topic_id) {
  auto status =
      client.DeleteTopic(pubsub::Topic(project_id, topic_id).FullName());
  // Note that kNotFound is a possible result when the library retries.
  if (status.code() == google::cloud::StatusCode::kNotFound) {
    std::cout << "The topic was not found\n";
    return;
  }
  if (!status.ok()) throw std::runtime_error(status.message());

  std::cout << "The topic was successfully deleted\n";
}

C#

Before trying this sample, follow the C# setup instructions in the Pub/Sub quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub C# API reference documentation.

To authenticate to Pub/Sub, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.


using Google.Cloud.PubSub.V1;

public class DeleteTopicSample
{
    public void DeleteTopic(string projectId, string topicId)
    {
        PublisherServiceApiClient publisher = PublisherServiceApiClient.Create();
        TopicName topicName = TopicName.FromProjectTopic(projectId, topicId);
        publisher.DeleteTopic(topicName);
    }
}

Go

Before trying this sample, follow the Go setup instructions in the Pub/Sub quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub Go API reference documentation.

To authenticate to Pub/Sub, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.

import (
	"context"
	"fmt"
	"io"

	"cloud.google.com/go/pubsub"
)

func delete(w io.Writer, projectID, topicID string) error {
	// projectID := "my-project-id"
	// topicID := "my-topic"
	ctx := context.Background()
	client, err := pubsub.NewClient(ctx, projectID)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("pubsub.NewClient: %w", err)
	}
	defer client.Close()

	t := client.Topic(topicID)
	if err := t.Delete(ctx); err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("Delete: %w", err)
	}
	fmt.Fprintf(w, "Deleted topic: %v\n", t)
	return nil
}

Java

Before trying this sample, follow the Java setup instructions in the Pub/Sub quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub Java API reference documentation.

To authenticate to Pub/Sub, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.


import com.google.api.gax.rpc.NotFoundException;
import com.google.cloud.pubsub.v1.TopicAdminClient;
import com.google.pubsub.v1.TopicName;
import java.io.IOException;

public class DeleteTopicExample {
  public static void main(String... args) throws Exception {
    // TODO(developer): Replace these variables before running the sample.
    String projectId = "your-project-id";
    String topicId = "your-topic-id";

    deleteTopicExample(projectId, topicId);
  }

  public static void deleteTopicExample(String projectId, String topicId) throws IOException {
    try (TopicAdminClient topicAdminClient = TopicAdminClient.create()) {
      TopicName topicName = TopicName.of(projectId, topicId);
      try {
        topicAdminClient.deleteTopic(topicName);
        System.out.println("Deleted topic.");
      } catch (NotFoundException e) {
        System.out.println(e.getMessage());
      }
    }
  }
}

Node.js

/**
 * TODO(developer): Uncomment this variable before running the sample.
 */
// const topicNameOrId = 'YOUR_TOPIC_NAME_OR_ID';

// Imports the Google Cloud client library
const {PubSub} = require('@google-cloud/pubsub');

// Creates a client; cache this for further use
const pubSubClient = new PubSub();

async function deleteTopic(topicNameOrId) {
  /**
   * TODO(developer): Uncomment the following line to run the sample.
   */
  // const topicName = 'my-topic';

  // Deletes the topic
  await pubSubClient.topic(topicNameOrId).delete();
  console.log(`Topic ${topicNameOrId} deleted.`);
}

Node.js

/**
 * TODO(developer): Uncomment this variable before running the sample.
 */
// const topicNameOrId = 'YOUR_TOPIC_NAME_OR_ID';

// Imports the Google Cloud client library
import {PubSub} from '@google-cloud/pubsub';

// Creates a client; cache this for further use
const pubSubClient = new PubSub();

async function deleteTopic(topicNameOrId: string) {
  /**
   * TODO(developer): Uncomment the following line to run the sample.
   */
  // const topicName = 'my-topic';

  // Deletes the topic
  await pubSubClient.topic(topicNameOrId).delete();
  console.log(`Topic ${topicNameOrId} deleted.`);
}

PHP

Before trying this sample, follow the PHP setup instructions in the Pub/Sub quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub PHP API reference documentation.

To authenticate to Pub/Sub, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.

use Google\Cloud\PubSub\PubSubClient;

/**
 * Creates a Pub/Sub topic.
 *
 * @param string $projectId  The Google project ID.
 * @param string $topicName  The Pub/Sub topic name.
 */
function delete_topic($projectId, $topicName)
{
    $pubsub = new PubSubClient([
        'projectId' => $projectId,
    ]);
    $topic = $pubsub->topic($topicName);
    $topic->delete();

    printf('Topic deleted: %s' . PHP_EOL, $topic->name());
}

Python

Before trying this sample, follow the Python setup instructions in the Pub/Sub quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub Python API reference documentation.

To authenticate to Pub/Sub, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.

from google.cloud import pubsub_v1

# TODO(developer)
# project_id = "your-project-id"
# topic_id = "your-topic-id"

publisher = pubsub_v1.PublisherClient()
topic_path = publisher.topic_path(project_id, topic_id)

publisher.delete_topic(request={"topic": topic_path})

print(f"Topic deleted: {topic_path}")

Ruby

Before trying this sample, follow the Ruby setup instructions in the Pub/Sub quickstart using client libraries. For more information, see the Pub/Sub Ruby API reference documentation.

To authenticate to Pub/Sub, set up Application Default Credentials. For more information, see Set up authentication for a local development environment.

# topic_id = "your-topic-id"

pubsub = Google::Cloud::Pubsub.new

topic = pubsub.topic topic_id
topic.delete

puts "Topic #{topic_id} deleted."

What's next

Choose the type of subscription for your topic.
Create a subscription for your topic: pull, push, or BigQuery.
Create or modify a topic with gcloud CLI.
Create or modify a topic with REST APIs.