SharePoint’s Recycle Bin

Each web application may keep two different kinds of lists from which deleted items may be restored. Every website gets its own “first stage” or end-user Recycle Bin, where deleted items are being sent when removed by users using the Recycle method. After a few days (30 days by default), these items may be sent to site collection’s “second stage” Recycle Bin, which is accessible only to site collection administrators. When the size of this list goes over some percent value (50% by default) of the live site quota, second-stage items may be also automatically deleted. This article presents the visual model of all classes involved in SharePoint 2010 with the Recycle Bin.

Recycle Bin Access and Configuration

Recycle Bin can be accessed and configured at three different levels:

1. Web Application (SPWebApplication) – configure Recycle Bin for all site collections within the application from the Central Administration. Select a web application from the Application Management/Manage Web Application applications list, then open the popup dialog General Settings/General Settingsand scroll to the Recycle Bin section. Available configuration options:
   • Turn the Recycle Bin On (defauls) or Off. Turning off the Recycle Bins will empty all the Recycle Bins in the web application.
   • Specify if items in the first-stage SPWeb-level Recycle Bin lists will be automatically deleted after a number of days (by default 30 days). If second-stage SPSite-level Recycle Bin is not Off, these items will not be permanently deleted, but sent to this site collection-level list, accessible only to site collection administrators.
   • Specify if the second-stage SPSite-level Recycle Bin lists are not Off and if their oldest items will be automatically and permanently deleted when the Recycle Bin reaches 50% by default (or another custom value) of the live site quota.
2. Site Collection (SPSite) – access and show the second-stage Recycle Bin list by Site Actions/Site Settings/Site Collection Administration/Recycle Bin. Items of this list may be selected and further permanently deleted (by Delete Selection) or restored (by Restore Selection). Empty Recycle Bin command will cleanup the full list. The list has two views: “End user Recycle Bin items” and “Deleted from end user Recycle Bin”.
3. Site (SPWeb) – access and show the first-stage Recycle Bin list by the Quick Launch/Recycle Bin command, or within the All Site Content/Recycle Bin entry (through /_layouts/recyclebin.aspx page). The list looks similar with the second-stage list, but this Recycle Bin is usually accessible to all users, from which they can Delete or Restore selections in a similar manner. Remember deleted items from these first-stage lists will be actually moved to the second-stage Recycle Bin, if it is not Off.

Top Object Model of the Recycle Bin Lists

It is the time to show a simple diagram with the Recycle Bin SharePoint 2010 classes:

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Both SPSite and SPWeb classes expose a RecycleBin property, which will return the related second-stage or the first-stage SPRecycleBinItemCollection with SPRecycleBinItem objects, as described before. SPRecycleBinItemCollection has back pointers to its Site collection and Web site, while SPRecycleBinItem has a back pointer to its Web site.

• SPRecycleBinItemCollection.BinType –> SPRecycleBinType shows the collection type: RecycleBin for end-user first-stage RecycleBin or SiteRecycleBin for site-collection second-stage Recycle Bin, NoRecycleBin if not specified.
• SPRecycleBinItem.ItemState –> SPRecycleBinItemState is a similar and somehow redundant enumeration type, but for a deleted item: FirstStageRecycleBin for items in the end-user Recycle Bin, SecondStageRecycleBin for items in the site-collection Recycle Bin, InvalidStage if not specified.
• SPRecycleBinItem.ItemType –> SPRecycleBinItemType shows the type of the deleted item: File for a file (SPFile), FileVersion for a file version (SPFileVersion), ListItem for a list item (SPListItem), List for a list (SPList), Folder for a folder (SPFolder), FolderWithLists for a folder that contains a list, Attachment for an attachment, ListItemVersion for a specific version of a list item, CascadeParent if the item is the parent of one or more related list items, Web for a website (SPWeb), Invalid if not specified.

All classes whose objects may be sent to the Recycle Bin (SPFile, SPFolder, SPWeb, SPFileVersion, SPList, SPListItem) expose a Recycle() method, which may be used instead of Delete() to make the item recoverable. Except for the SPFileVersion, the method returns the GUID of the new SPRecycleBinItem, associated with the deleted object. SPListItemVersionCollection exposes also a RecycleAll() method, beside the traditional DeleteAll(). Site collection items may be programmatically restored or permanently deleted with the SPSite.Restore() or Delete() methods.

Collection and Items

Let’s look inside to other members of the two main classes that build the infrastructure of a Recycle Bin: SPRecycleBinItemCollection and SPRecycleBinItem:

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SPRecycleBinItem exposes properties that can be used in the list. The ID is the GUID usually returned by the Recycle() method of the deleted object. All other members are rather self-explanatory.

Recycle Bin Query

Recycle Bin lists look like typical SharePoint lists but they are not. You cannot use SPQuery on them, because data is brought directly from the database. As for SPList objects, iterating through the collection when you have a large number of items may affect performance. Here is where the Recycle Bin-specific SPRecycleBinQuery class comes in handy:

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The following code sequence passes a SPRecycleBinQuery object to the SPWeb.GetRecycleBinItems() method to get a limited number of Recycle Bin items and flush them. Following criteria has been set (and highlighted) through query’s properties: max 2000 items (RowLimit), oldest items (OrderBy and IsAscending), first-stage (ItemState):

using (SPSite site = new SPSite("http://localhost/")) {
   SPRecycleBinQuery query = new SPRecycleBinQuery();
   query.RowLimit = 2000;
   query.OrderBy = SPRecycleBinOrderBy.DeletedDate;
   query.IsAscending = false;
   query.ItemState = SPRecycleBinItemState.FirstStageRecycleBin;

   SPRecycleBinItemCollection coll = site.RootWeb.GetRecycleBinItems(query);
   foreach (SPRecycleBinItem item in coll) {
      Guid[] id = new Guid[1];
      id[0] = item.ID;
      coll.Delete(id);
   }
}