CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-railsrubyrubygemsruby-on-rails-5soft-delete
kashif
kashif

Reputation: 1147

Soft Delete has_and_belongs_to_many association using discard gem

What is the best way to soft delete has_and_belongs_to_many associations using Discard Gem. With this association, there is a join table in database but without actual Ruby on Rails Model.

I'll try to explain via an example, lets say there are 2 models:

class Participant < ApplicationRecord
  has_and_belongs_to_many :company_employees
end


class CompanyEmployee < ApplicationRecord
  has_and_belongs_to_many :participants
end

This will create company_employees_participants middle/join table in database BUT without any model in Ruby on Rails. Where i can make settings for discard gem ?

Any idea how i can solve this requirement where we need to have soft delete in joined tables using has_and_belongs_to_many assocaition in discard gem ?

discard gem: https://github.com/jhawthorn/discard

I'm using ruby 2.5.3, Rails 5.1.6, discard(1.0.0)

Upvotes: 1

Views: 901

Answers (2)

Rohit Lingayat
Rohit Lingayat

Reputation: 716

You can take a look at paranoia gem. This gem helps you to implement the soft delete functionality. If you don't want to use the gem then you can implement it manually.

If you want to integrate manually the changes are simple:

  • First, you need to add migration to add the column deleted_at as a datetime data field type.

  • Then you can write scope to filter out the data the same as paranoia gem do e.g. with_deleted where you can check the deleted_at IS NULL

  • Whenever you delete any record you can set the deleted_at.

I found one reference on StackOverflow you can refer it How to use paranoia gem in many to many association

hope it will help you

Upvotes: 0

jdno
jdno

Reputation: 4364

I don't think there's any gem that can soft delete a has_and_belongs_to_many relationship. The best way forward would probably be to refactor your relationship and make it explicit with has_many :through. This allows you to customize the relationship, e.g. with soft delete. The change is pretty straightforward:

  1. Create a migration to rename the join table.
  2. Create a new model and match the name of the table.
  3. Change has_and_belongs_to_many to has_many :through.

You can then go ahead and follow discard's instructions to enable soft delete.

Generally speaking, I would avoid has_and_belongs_to_many as much as possible. Sooner or later, I've always had to customize the join model and had to refactor the code. has_many :through is just slightly more work to set up initially, but it's so much more flexible down the road that it's worth the effort.

Upvotes: 2

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