Removing Items from Recycle Bin that uses specific Content types

Question

I want to delete custom content type from Pages library but it did not allow me to delete and says "content type is still in use". Then i get to know that i need to delete it from following locations as well: 1. Root site Recycle bin 2. End user recycle items 3. Deleted from end user recycle bin

After deleting from these locations, i was able to delete CT from Pages library successfully. But Now,
I want to write a powershell script instead to delete only those specific items from above three locations that still having reference these content types. How i specify only those items in my script? any example can help me?

I don't want to delete all items from recycle bin

Answer 1

You can cycle through all items in recycle bin, but they do not contain property "Content type".

$web = Get-SPWeb "https://contoso.com"
foreach($item in $web.RecycleBin)
{
    # delete based on directory
    if($item.DirName -like "AwesomeFolder/*")
    {
        $item.Delete();
    }
}

$web.Dispose();
Write-Host "End" -BackgroundColor DarkGreen -ForegroundColor Green

# EXAMPLE OF ITEM IN RECYCLE BIN
#Web            : Contoso
#ID             : 61abc558-40a7-45d2-8af5-673963742a1e
#ItemState      : FirstStageRecycleBin
#ItemType       : File
#Title          : Document for testing
#DirName        : AwesomeFolder/2018/
#LeafName       : test.docx
#Author         : Domain\User1
#AuthorId       : 30
#AuthorName     : Domain\User1
#AuthorEmail    : [email protected]
#DeletedBy      : Domain\User1
#DeletedById    : 30
#DeletedByName  : Domain\User1
#DeletedByEmail : [email protected]
#DeletedDate    : 09.11.2018 10:02:43
#Size           : 110474
#ProgId         : 
#ImageUrl       : /_layouts/images/icdocx.png

If You can guess CT from library and path (DirName) or title (Title), then You are lucky. If not, there is one long and painful way (unsupported by Microsoft) - get data from SQL database directly. I cannot give precise SQL queries, but the idea is like this :

1) get all items from [RecycleBin] table

2) use IDs to locate items in [AllDocs] table

3) decompress data in [MetaInfo] column --> here You will find Content type :)

4) use column [DoclibRowId] value to delete items in recycle bin by column [Id]