Delete child items recursively in Sitecore CMS.NET

Question

I have the following structure in my Sitecore media library

images/department/sub-department/product/

And I want to delete all of the images in code a department at a time. At the moment I have

Item[] items = database.SelectItems("/sitecore/media library/images/department1//*");            

Sitecore.Data.Engines.DataEngine engine = new Sitecore.Data.Engines.DataEngine(database);

using (new SecurityDisabler())
{
    foreach (Item item in items)
    {
        engine.DeleteItem(item))
    }
}

The problem is it only deletes the child images of department1 and nothing underneath that?

Answer 1

DataEngine is a very low level API, which shouldn't be used without a reason.

Deleting all subitems simultaneously is easy:

Item department1 = database.GetItem("/sitecore/media library/images/department1"); department1.DeleteChildren();

This will leave department1 item, but everything under it will be deleted.