ActsAsParanoid

A simple plugin which hides records instead of deleting them, being able to recover them.

Credits

This plugin was inspired by acts_as_paranoid and acts_as_active.

While porting it to Rails 3, I decided to apply the ideas behind those plugins to an unified solution while removing a lot of the complexity found in them. I eventually ended up writing a new plugin from scratch.

Usage

You can enable ActsAsParanoid like this:

class Paranoiac < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_paranoid
end

Options

You can also specify the name of the column to store it's deletion and the type of data it holds:

:column => 'deleted_at'
:type => 'time'

The values shown are the defaults. While column can be anything (as long as it exists in your database), type is restricted to "boolean" or "time".

Filtering

If a record is deleted by ActsAsParanoid, it won't be retrieved when accessing the database. So, Paranoiac.all will not include the deleted_records. if you want to access them, you have 2 choices: Paranoiac.only_deleted # retrieves the deleted records Paranoiac.with_deleted # retrieves all records, deleted or not

Real deletion

In order to really delete a record, just use: paranoiac.destroy! Paranoiac.delete_all!(conditions)

You can also definitively delete a record by calling destroy or delete_all on it twice. If a record was already deleted (hidden by ActsAsParanoid) and you delete it again, it will be removed from the database. Take this example: Paranoiac.first.destroy # does NOT delete the first record, just hides it Paranoiac.only_deleted.destroy # deletes the first record from the database

Recovery

Recovery is easy. Just invoke recover on it, like this: Paranoiac.only_deleted.where("name = ?", "not dead yet").first.recover

Caveats

Watch out for these caveats:

If you use default_scope in your model, you need to include it after the acts_as_paranoid invocation
You cannot use scopes named with_deleted and only_deleted