Question

I have a MySQL database set-up in a hierarchy style. There are 4 tables called pages, regions, elements, and content. Pages is at the top, and content is at the bottom.

To simplify:

pages has the column:

id

regions has the columns:

id
page_id

elements has the columns:

id
region_id

content has the columns:

id
element_id

---

I want to be able to delete all the children of pages using just the page’s id.

So far, I’ve been able to use a nested select statement to select the bottom content using the page’s id, but that doesn’t select the elements, regions, or the page.

SELECT * FROM `content` WHERE `element_id` IN (
    SELECT `id` FROM `elements` WHERE `region_id` IN (
        SELECT `id` FROM `regions` WHERE `page_id` IN (
            SELECT `id` FROM `pages` WHERE `id` = 1
        )
    )
) 

Anyway to do this efficiently? Thanks.

---

Thanks to @Hago and @Churk, here’s my final solution (basically Churk’s code, a tiny bit modified):

DELETE `content`, `elements`, `regions` FROM `content`
JOIN `elements` ON `elements`.`id` = `content`.`element_id`
JOIN `regions` ON `regions`.`id` = `elements`.`region_id` 
JOIN `pages` ON `pages`.`id` = `regions`.`page_id`
WHERE `pages`.`id` = 1

Answer 1

DELETE FROM content
JOIN elements ON elements.id = content.element_id
JOIN regions ON regions.id = elements.region_id 
JOIN pages ON pages.id = regions.page_id
WHERE pages.id = 1