doctrine2/manual/docs/Working with objects - Component overview - Collection - Deleting collection.php

Doctrine Collections can be deleted in very same way is Doctrine Records you just call delete() method.
As for all collections Doctrine knows how to perform single-shot-delete meaning it only performs one 
database query for the each collection. 
<br \> <br \>
For example if we have collection of users which own [0-*] phonenumbers. When deleting the collection
of users doctrine only performs two queries for this whole transaction. The queries would look something like:
<br \><br \>
DELETE FROM user WHERE id IN (1,2,3, ... ,N)<br \>
DELETE FROM phonenumber WHERE id IN (1,2,3, ... ,M)<br \>
<br \><br \>
It should also be noted that Doctrine is smart enough to perform single-shot-delete per table when transactions are used.
So if you are deleting a lot of records and want to optimize the operation just wrap the delete calls in Doctrine_Connection transaction.


<code type="php">
// delete all users with name 'John'

$users = $table->findByDql("name LIKE '%John%'");

$users->delete();
</code>