Delete List (forget about forcedeletelist)

Okay - so I'm trying to test some import issues with lists and decide to export an existing list that has documents set the way I need them. I run my import test and realize I've got more work to do so I go to delete the list via the browser. Hmm... the delete option isn't there - no problem I say - there's a forcedeletelist command that I just blogged about last week so I'll use that. But what's this - I ran the command and I got this error: "The requested delete operation could not be performed. (Exception from HRESULT:0x800720CE)".

Okay - what the heck! What's the point of a "FORCE"deletelist command if it doesn't FORCE the deletion of the list. So I did some testing and I discovered that the reason it couldn't delete it was because there was a property called "AllowDeletion" which was set to false (my list was the "Documents" list which is part of the publishing feature so it's set to not allow deletion). I checked this property out and it turns out that it's a really simple property with public getter and setters (the later being unusual in my experience - I usually have to use reflection to hack the objects). So I set the property to true and then tried a simple SPList.Delete() and it worked like a charm.

So what did I conclude - forcedeletelist is misnamed and should be abandoned - I've created a new command called simply gl-deletelist which allows you to pass a "-force" parameter in to actually force the deletion of the list. Now granted - there may be cases in which mine still fails but at least it will handle the AllowDeletion setting! Here's the code:

   1: internal static void Delete(SPList list, bool force, string url)

   2: {

   3:  if (list == null)

   4:   throw new SPException("List not found.");

   5:  

   6:  if (!list.AllowDeletion && force)

   7:  {

   8:   list.AllowDeletion = true;

   9:   list.Update();

  10:  }

  11:  else if (!list.AllowDeletion)

  12:   throw new SPException("List cannot be deleted.  Try using the '-force' parameter to force the delete.");

  13:  

  14:  try

  15:  {

  16:   list.Delete();

  17:  }

  18:  catch (Exception)

  19:  {

  20:   if (force)

  21:   {

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

  23:    {

  24:     Utilities.RunStsAdmOperation(

  25:      string.Format(" -o forcedeletelist -url \"{0}\"",

  26:           site.MakeFullUrl(list.RootFolder.ServerRelativeUrl)), false);

  27:    }

  28:   }

  29:  }

  30: }

The syntax of the command can be seen below:

C:\>stsadm -help gl-deletelist

stsadm -o gl-deletelist

Deletes a list.

Parameters:
        -url <list view URL>
        [-force]

Here's an example of how to delete a list passing in the force parameter:

stsadm –o gl-deletelist -url "http://intranet/Documents/Forms/AllItems.aspx" -force