CODEWITHSUNDEEP
ruby-on-rails
Leandro Castro
Leandro Castro

Reputation: 558

Intercept the destroy method in Rails

I would like to log some information when the user deletes things on my system.

The premise is simple, if I delete it I'll record it in the log_delete table.

I know it's possible to do this using before_destroy, however, I would like the implementation to be transparent, and not need to add before_destroy to every model.

That way the developer doesn't have to worry about putting this in if he creates a new model.

Is there any way to use something like before_destroy for all models?

Upvotes: 0

Views: 122

Answers (1)

mu is too short
mu is too short

Reputation: 434985

You should have an ApplicationRecord like this:

class ApplicationRecord < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.abstract_class = true
  # Maybe some other stuff...
end

as a base class for all your ActiveRecord models.

You could put a before_destroy there and then the callback can pull whatever information out of self and self.class that it needs to log.

ApplicationRecord has been standard practice since, AFAIK, Rails 5 so it should be in place and if it isn't, you really should add one.

Alternatively you could use a database trigger and let the database take care of it. I tend to think a trigger is where this sort of thing belongs and has the benefit of being a lot harder to get around (either intentionally or accidentally). On the downside, this requires a small amount of database-specific coding but that's nearly impossible to avoid in any non-trivial application.

Upvotes: 2

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