How do I remove a contact from a group using the API?

Question

As part of an import process, I'm trying to remove contacts from a group. There is a delete call for the GroupContact entity but this has been deprecated in favour of create (which I find puzzling). A getfields call shows that a CRM_Core_SelectValues::groupContactStatus callback is available, but this takes no arguments and is for display purposes only as far as I can tell.

How do I use the create function to remove a specific contact from a group, or if that isn't possible, how do I use the API to remove a contact from a group?

Answer 1

From using the API Explorer (Support menu > Developer > API Explorer) I can see that you can delete a GroupContact entity by specifying a GroupContact ID and a Group Contact Status of "Removed".

I don't think that makes a lot of sense - even for a non-standard API such as GroupContact, since a Group Contact Status of "Removed" is NOT the same as a deleted contact.

Note that my findings are at variance with CRM-16878, which covers the same topic.