How to "Delete" items ?

[pjppo]

Hi, i'm using the universal recommander template with predictionio to recommend products from a store. My issue is that said store can delete products in back office, for any reason, when it does the item must of course not be recommanded anymore. I then need a way to delete said item but not in a permanent way. Right now the best way i'v found is to give an item a specific property (let's say "eliminated"), re-train and then filter for on that property with a bias = 0, this way i just need to remove that property if i want the item back .
Is there a better way to do this? Re-train take time , does a way to avoid it exist?
I tried some other methods like an $unset event on the item , but doing so still require a re-train and it also require a full $set event to bring it back if i need to do so , and $delete event, that seems to do nothing at all, but it worked when i tried with a different template (similar product) and without a re-train. last thing i tried was the avaible/expire date but first i don't know the expire date until someone decide to actually make it expire ,second i need to make the change and then re-train if i want the changes to apply, so i'm back to square one.
Any answer will be very appreciated.
universal recommander version is 0.7.3
predictionio version is 0.13.0

[vking34]

Did you have any solution?
I met the same issue. I tried the $delete event, but it did not work.