A Better Delete Web

I recently had to use the built-in deleteweb command to delete a web site and was irritated to find that the command wouldn't let me delete the web because it had sub-webs. I simply couldn't live with that as it's extremely frustrating to have to delete all the child webs one at a time. So I created a better deleteweb command, called simply gl-deleteweb2. It behaves exactly like the built-in deleteweb command except that you can pass in a "recurse" switch to have it delete recursively (delete the web and all it's children). What was really nice is that it took me literally 2 minutes to create this command (nice change from some of the more challenging ones I've had lately).

The code is extremely simple:

   1: /// <summary>

   2: /// Runs the specified command.

   3: /// </summary>

   4: /// <param name="command">The command.</param>

   5: /// <param name="keyValues">The key values.</param>

   6: /// <param name="output">The output.</param>

   7: /// <returns></returns>

   8: public override int Run(string command, StringDictionary keyValues, out string output)

   9: {

  10:  output = string.Empty;

  11:  

  12:  InitParameters(keyValues);

  13:  

  14:  string url = Params["url"].Value.TrimEnd('/');

  15:  

  16:  using (SPSite site = new SPSite(url))

  17:  using (SPWeb web = site.OpenWeb())

  18:  {

  19:   if (web.IsRootWeb)

  20:   {

  21:    throw new SPException(SPResource.GetString("CannotDelRootwebByDelweb", new object[0]));

  22:   }

  23:  

  24:   if (web.Webs.Count > 0 && !Params["recurse"].UserTypedIn)

  25:   {

  26:    throw new SPException(

  27:     string.Format(

  28:      "Error deleting Web site \"{0}\".  You can't delete a site that has subsites unless you pass the \"recurse\" flag into the command.",

  29:      web.ServerRelativeUrl));

  30:   }

  31:  

  32:   if (web.Webs.Count > 0 && Params["recurse"].UserTypedIn)

  33:    DeleteSubWebs(web.Webs);

  34:  

  35:   web.Delete();

  36:  

  37:  }

  38:  

  39:  return 1;

  40: }

  41:  

  42: #endregion

  43:  

  44: /// <summary>

  45: /// Deletes the sub webs.

  46: /// </summary>

  47: /// <param name="webs">The webs.</param>

  48: private static void DeleteSubWebs(SPWebCollection webs)

  49: {

  50:  foreach (SPWeb web in webs)

  51:  {

  52:   if (web.Webs.Count > 0)

  53:    DeleteSubWebs(web.Webs);

  54:  

  55:   web.Delete();

  56:  }

  57: }

Use this command just like deleteweb but pass in "-recurse" if you want to delete a web with sub-webs (this keeps the action explicit so the user understands that it will delete all sub-webs). The syntax of the command can be seen below:

C:\>stsadm -help gl-deleteweb2

stsadm -o gl-deleteweb2

Deletes a web.

Parameters:
        -url <url of web to delete>
        [-recurse (delete all sub-sites)]

Here’s an example of how to delete a web recursively:

stsadm –o gl-deleteweb2 -url "http://intranet/WebWithChildren" -recurse