Detach subscriptions

When you create a subscription, you attach the subscription to a topic, and subscribers can receive messages from the subscription. To stop subscribers from receiving messages, you can detach subscriptions from the topic.

Before you detach a subscription, you need the pubsub.topics.detachSubscription permission on the topic. You can detach a subscription without permissions on the subscription, which is useful for managing a topic that is in a different project than the subscription. For more information, see Pub/Sub access control.

Before you begin

Learn about subscriptions.
Create one of the following subscriptions, pull, push, or BigQuery.

Required roles and permissions

To get the permissions that you need to detach subscriptions 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 to projects, folders, and organizations.

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

Required permissions

The following permissions are required to detach subscriptions and manage them:

Pull from a subscription: pubsub.subscriptions.consume
Create a subscription: pubsub.subscriptions.create
Delete a subscription: pubsub.subscriptions.delete
Get a subscription: pubsub.subscriptions.get
List a subscription: pubsub.subscriptions.list
Update a subscription: pubsub.subscriptions.update
Attach a subscription to a topic: pubsub.topics.attachSubscription
Get the IAM policy for a subscription: pubsub.subscriptions.getIamPolicy
Configure the IAM policy for a subscription: pubsub.subscriptions.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.

Detach a subscription from a topic

You can detach a subscription from a topic using the Google Cloud console, the Google Cloud CLI, the client library, or the Pub/Sub API.

Console

To detach a subscription, follow these steps:

In the Google Cloud console, go to the Topics page.

Go to Topics
Select the topic from which you want to detach a subscription.
In the Subscriptions tab, select the subscription to detach.
In the Subscription details page, click Detach.
In the dialog that appears, click Detach again.

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 detach a subscription, use the gcloud pubsub topics detach-subscription command:
```
gcloud pubsub topics detach-subscription SUBSCRIPTION_ID
```
If the request is successful, the command line displays a confirmation:
```
Detached subscription [SUBSCRIPTION_ID].
```

REST

To detach a subscription, use the projects.subscriptions.detachmethod.

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, use the gcloud auth application-default print-access-token command.

POST https://pubsub.googleapis.com/v1/projects/PROJECT_ID/subscriptions/SUBSCRIPTION_ID:detach
Authorization: Bearer ACCESS_TOKEN

Where:

PROJECT_ID is your project ID.

SUBSCRIPTION_ID is your subscription 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& subscription_id) {
  google::pubsub::v1::DetachSubscriptionRequest request;
  request.set_subscription(
      pubsub::Subscription(project_id, subscription_id).FullName());
  auto response = client.DetachSubscription(request);
  if (!response.ok()) throw std::move(response).status();

  std::cout << "The subscription was successfully detached: "
            << response->DebugString() << "\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;
using System;

public class DetachSubscriptionSample
{
    public void DetachSubscription(string projectId, string subscriptionId)
    {
        PublisherServiceApiClient publisher = PublisherServiceApiClient.Create();

        DetachSubscriptionRequest detachSubscriptionRequest = new DetachSubscriptionRequest
        {
            SubscriptionAsSubscriptionName = SubscriptionName.FromProjectSubscription(projectId, subscriptionId),
        };

        publisher.DetachSubscription(detachSubscriptionRequest);

        Console.WriteLine($"Subscription {subscriptionId} is detached.");
    }
}

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 detachSubscription(w io.Writer, projectID, subName string) error {
	// projectID is the project which contains the topic you manage.
	// This might differ from the project which contains the subscription
	// you wish to detach, which can exist in any GCP project.
	// projectID := "my-project-id"
	// subName := "projects/some-project/subscriptions/my-sub"
	ctx := context.Background()
	client, err := pubsub.NewClient(ctx, projectID)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("pubsub.NewClient: %w", err)
	}
	defer client.Close()

	// Call DetachSubscription, which detaches a subscription from
	// a topic. This can only be done if you have the
	// `pubsub.topics.detachSubscription` role on the topic.
	_, err = client.DetachSubscription(ctx, subName)
	if err != nil {
		return fmt.Errorf("detach subscription failed: %w", err)
	}

	fmt.Fprintf(w, "Detached subscription %s", subName)
	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.cloud.pubsub.v1.SubscriptionAdminClient;
import com.google.cloud.pubsub.v1.TopicAdminClient;
import com.google.pubsub.v1.DetachSubscriptionRequest;
import com.google.pubsub.v1.Subscription;
import com.google.pubsub.v1.SubscriptionName;
import java.io.IOException;

public class DetachSubscriptionExample {
  public static void main(String... args) throws Exception {
    // TODO(developer): Replace these variables before running the sample.
    String projectId = "your-project-id";
    // Choose an existing subscription.
    String subscriptionId = "your-subscription-id";

    detachSubscriptionExample(projectId, subscriptionId);
  }

  public static void detachSubscriptionExample(String projectId, String subscriptionId)
      throws IOException {
    SubscriptionName subscriptionName = SubscriptionName.of(projectId, subscriptionId);

    try (TopicAdminClient topicAdminClient = TopicAdminClient.create()) {
      topicAdminClient.detachSubscription(
          DetachSubscriptionRequest.newBuilder()
              .setSubscription(subscriptionName.toString())
              .build());
    }

    try (SubscriptionAdminClient subscriptionAdminClient = SubscriptionAdminClient.create()) {
      Subscription subscription = subscriptionAdminClient.getSubscription(subscriptionName);
      if (subscription.getDetached()) {
        System.out.println("Subscription is detached.");
      } else {
        System.out.println("Subscription is NOT detached.");
      }
    }
  }
}

Node.js

/**
 * TODO(developer): Uncomment these variables before running the sample.
 */
// const subscriptionNameOrId = 'YOUR_EXISTING_SUBSCRIPTION_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 detachSubscription(subscriptionNameOrId) {
  // Gets the status of the existing subscription
  const sub = pubSubClient.subscription(subscriptionNameOrId);
  const [detached] = await sub.detached();
  console.log(
    `Subscription ${subscriptionNameOrId} 'before' detached status: ${detached}`
  );

  await pubSubClient.detachSubscription(subscriptionNameOrId);
  console.log(`Subscription ${subscriptionNameOrId} detach request was sent.`);

  const [updatedDetached] = await sub.detached();
  console.log(
    `Subscription ${subscriptionNameOrId} 'after' detached status: ${updatedDetached}`
  );
}

Node.js

/**
 * TODO(developer): Uncomment these variables before running the sample.
 */
// const subscriptionNameOrId = 'YOUR_EXISTING_SUBSCRIPTION_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 detachSubscription(subscriptionNameOrId: string) {
  // Gets the status of the existing subscription
  const sub = pubSubClient.subscription(subscriptionNameOrId);
  const [detached] = await sub.detached();
  console.log(
    `Subscription ${subscriptionNameOrId} 'before' detached status: ${detached}`
  );

  await pubSubClient.detachSubscription(subscriptionNameOrId);
  console.log(`Subscription ${subscriptionNameOrId} detach request was sent.`);

  const [updatedDetached] = await sub.detached();
  console.log(
    `Subscription ${subscriptionNameOrId} 'after' detached status: ${updatedDetached}`
  );
}

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;

/**
 * Detach a Pub/Sub subscription from a topic.
 *
 * @param string $projectId  The Google project ID.
 * @param string $subscriptionName  The Pub/Sub subscription name.
 */
function detach_subscription($projectId, $subscriptionName)
{
    $pubsub = new PubSubClient([
        'projectId' => $projectId,
    ]);
    $subscription = $pubsub->subscription($subscriptionName);
    $subscription->detach();

    printf('Subscription detached: %s' . PHP_EOL, $subscription->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.api_core.exceptions import GoogleAPICallError, RetryError
from google.cloud import pubsub_v1

# TODO(developer): Choose an existing subscription.
# project_id = "your-project-id"
# subscription_id = "your-subscription-id"

publisher_client = pubsub_v1.PublisherClient()
subscriber_client = pubsub_v1.SubscriberClient()
subscription_path = subscriber_client.subscription_path(project_id, subscription_id)

try:
    publisher_client.detach_subscription(
        request={"subscription": subscription_path}
    )
except (GoogleAPICallError, RetryError, ValueError, Exception) as err:
    print(err)

subscription = subscriber_client.get_subscription(
    request={"subscription": subscription_path}
)
if subscription.detached:
    print(f"{subscription_path} is detached.")
else:
    print(f"{subscription_path} is NOT detached.")

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.

# subscription_id = "your-subscription-id"

pubsub = Google::Cloud::Pubsub.new

subscription = pubsub.subscription subscription_id
subscription.detach

sleep 120
subscription.reload!
if subscription.detached?
  puts "Subscription is detached."
else
  puts "Subscription is NOT detached."
end

The Pub/Sub service might take several minutes to finish detaching the subscription from the topic.

After the Pub/Sub service detaches the subscription from the topic, the Pub/Sub service deletes any messages that it retains for the subscription. You can't retrieve these messages from the subscription or reattach the subscription to a topic. To free up your Google Cloud project quota, delete the subscription.

If the subscription and the topic are in different Google Cloud projects, the Pub/Sub service adds an entry to the audit logs of both projects.

What's next

Create or modify a subscription with gcloud commands.
Create or modify a subscription with REST APIs.