Delete SharePoint Document Library Files Programmatically

Following on from this post on moving or copying SharePoint files with FrontPage Remote Procedure Calls (RPC), and this older post on remotely saving files to a SharePoint document library, the code below demonstrates how to remove files programmatically from a remote document library without using the SharePoint API. Documentation about the move method can be found here. The EscapeVectorChars method can be found in the original post. Obviously because this RPC method will remove documents from your site (potentially deleting them permanently), please use with appropriate caution!

Update: You can download a comprehensive c# class library to automate RPC calls - including removing files. See this blog post for more information.

        public static bool Remove(string webUrl, out string result, params string[] webRelativeUrls)

        {

            string method = "method=remove+documents%3a12.0.4518.1016&service_name=%2f&url_list=[{0}]";

            method = String.Format(method, GetStringVector(webRelativeUrls));

            try

            {

                using (WebClient webClient = new WebClient())

                {

                    webClient.Credentials = CredentialCache.DefaultCredentials;

                    webClient.Headers.Add("Content-Type", "application/x-vermeer-urlencoded");

                    webClient.Headers.Add("X-Vermeer-Content-Type", "application/x-vermeer-urlencoded");

                    result = Encoding.UTF8.GetString(webClient.UploadData(webUrl + "/_vti_bin/_vti_aut/author.dll", "POST", Encoding.UTF8.GetBytes(method)));

                    if (result.IndexOf("\n<p>message=successfully") < 0) //note: will show success even if document(s) did not exist on the server

                        throw new Exception(result);

                }

            }

            catch (Exception ex)

            {

                result = ex.Message;

                return false;

            }

            return true;

        }

        static string GetStringVector(string[] strings)

        {

            StringBuilder sb = new StringBuilder();

            foreach (string s in strings)

            {

                sb.Append(EscapeVectorChars(s));

                sb.Append(";");

            }

            return sb.ToString().TrimEnd(';');

        }