I need to purge my users on an OpenStack project easily, through an API call. Just like this CLI command :
neutron purge PROJECT_ID
Which is available in the Neutron project docs, but with an API call.
I couldn't find the API, so actually my question is :
1. Isn't there such an API?
if there is not,
2.why?
Is there a specific reason for?
I checked out the source-code of the clients and neutron-server, but unfortunately there is no dedicated endpoint in the REST-API for this functionality.
This feature is only supported by the neutron-client, but not by the openstack-client. When you run neutron purge PROJECT_ID all what the neutron-client does inside the python-code of the client, is to list all resources which are related to the given project and then iterate over this list and send a delete to the neutron REST-API for each single resource. So its only a simple automatism in the python-code of the client and not a specific endpoint on server-side.
See the specific function inside the code here: https://github.com/openstack/python-neutronclient/blob/master/neutronclient/neutron/v2_0/purge.py#L63
Based on my experience with openstack and its community, I think it was done like this, because it was easier to add new code only into the neutron-client. When this should have become a new endpoint, this feature had to be implemented in neutron, openstack-client and openstacksdk as well. Each repository has its own team. This purge-feature is so small, that it was not worth to persuade all 4 teams. The more components you try to update for one simple feature, the harder it is, because the one who wants to bring the feature upstream, is responsible to bring the teams of all required components together and when only one within the core-teams have a problem with your implementation, you have to start nearly at the beginning. So it can easily take over a year or two to bring a cross-component feature like a new endpoint upstream, when you are not part of the core-team by yourself. So to bring the feature only into the neutron-client is quite easy compared to a cross-project contribution.
This is at least the reason, why I would implement this feature only in neutron-client too, or only in the openstack-client if possible, instead of adding a new endpoint, when I would bring this feature upstream.