Get deleted issues from API without fetching every issue.

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Problem to solve

To me it looks like there is no way of knowing that an issue was deleted unless one scans all issues and determines that it is missing from the set. This is neither fast nor is it healthy for the server if client applications do this.

Target audience

Automation tools.

Further details

I have a Gitlab-API that needs to fetch all Gitlab issues for the users project. I do this once and safe them. Afterwards I just sync using the updated_at field. This worked like a charm but now I encountered a bug where someone deleted an issue and it still shows up in my client.

Proposal

Make "deleted" an new state besides "open" and "closed". If this is considered a breaking change, add a new flag to explicitly include deleted issues. If it is a concern that people might want to delete issues to hide information that is in them, omit everything but state, id, iid and timestamps.

Links / references

Edited Sep 23, 2025 by 🤖 GitLab Bot 🤖
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