Laravel Eloquent Safe Delete

This extension provides "safe" deletion for the Eloquent model, which attempts to invoke force delete, and, if it fails - falls back to soft delete.

For license information check the LICENSE-file.

Installation

The preferred way to install this extension is through composer.

Either run

php composer.phar require --prefer-dist illuminatech/db-safedelete

or add

"illuminatech/db-safedelete": "*"

to the require section of your composer.json.

Usage

This extension provides "safe" deletion for the Eloquent model, which attempts to invoke force delete, and, if it fails - falls back to soft delete. It works on top of regular Laravel model soft deleting feature.

In case of usage of the relational database, which supports foreign keys, like MySQL, PostgreSQL etc., "soft" deletion is widely used for keeping foreign keys consistence. For example: if user performs a purchase at the online shop, information about this purchase should remain in the system for the future bookkeeping. The DDL for such data structure may look like the following one:

CREATE TABLE `сustomers`
(
   `id` integer NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
   `name` varchar(64) NOT NULL,
   `address` varchar(64) NOT NULL,
   `phone` varchar(20) NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
) ENGINE InnoDB;

CREATE TABLE `purchases`
(
   `id` integer NOT NULL AUTO_INCREMENT,
   `customer_id` integer NOT NULL,
   `item_id` integer NOT NULL,
   `amount` integer NOT NULL,
    PRIMARY KEY (`id`)
    FOREIGN KEY (`customer_id`) REFERENCES `customers` (`id`) ON DELETE RESTRICT ON UPDATE CASCADE,
    FOREIGN KEY (`item_id`) REFERENCES `items` (`id`) ON DELETE RESTRICT ON UPDATE CASCADE,
) ENGINE InnoDB;

Thus, while set up a foreign key from 'purchase' to 'user', 'ON DELETE RESTRICT' mode is used. So on attempt to delete a user record, which have at least one purchase, a database error will occur. However, if user record have no external reference, it can be deleted.

This extension introduces Illuminatech\DbSafeDelete\SafeDeletes trait, which serves as an enhanced version of standard Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes, allowing handing foreign key constraints and custom delete allowing logic. Being attached to the model Illuminatech\DbSafeDelete\SafeDeletes changes model's regular delete() method in the way it attempts to invoke force delete, and, if it fails - falls back to soft delete. For example:

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminatech\DbSafeDelete\SafeDeletes;

class Customer extends Model
{
    use SafeDeletes;

    public function purchases()
    {
        return $this->hasMany(Purchase::class);
    }

    // ...
}

// if there is a foreign key reference :
$customerWithReference = Customer::query()
    ->whereHas('purchases')
    ->first();

$customerWithReference->delete(); // performs "soft" delete!

// if there is NO foreign key reference :
$customerWithoutReference = Customer::query()
    ->whereDoesntHave('purchases')
    ->first();

$customerWithoutReference->delete(); // performs actual delete!

Heads up! Make sure you do not attach both Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes and Illuminatech\DbSafeDelete\SafeDeletes in the same model class. It will cause PHP naming conflict error since Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes is already included into Illuminatech\DbSafeDelete\SafeDeletes.

Smart deletion

Usually "soft" deleting feature is used to prevent the database history loss, ensuring data, which has been in use and perhaps has a references or dependencies, is kept in the system. However, sometimes actual deleting is allowed for such data as well. For example: usually user account records should not be deleted but only marked as "trashed", however if you browse through users list and found accounts, which has been registered long ago, but don't have at least single log-in in the system, these records have no value for the history and can be removed from database to save a disk space.

You can make "soft" deletion to be "smart" and detect, if the record can be removed from the database or only marked as "trashed". This can be done via Illuminatech\DbSafeDelete\SafeDeletes::forceDeleteAllowed(). For example:

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminatech\DbSafeDelete\SafeDeletes;

class User extends Model
{
    use SafeDeletes;

    public function forceDeleteAllowed(): bool
    {
        return $this->last_login_at === null;
    }

    // ...
}

$user = User::query()->whereNull('last_login_at')->first();
$user->delete(); // removes the record!!!

$user = User::query()->whereNotNull('last_login_at')->first();
$user->delete(); // marks record as "trashed"

Manual delete flow control

Using Illuminatech\DbSafeDelete\SafeDeletes you can still manually "soft" delete or "force" delete a particular record, using following methods:

• softDelete() - always performs "soft" deletion.
• forceDelete() - always performs actual deletion.
• safeDelete() - attempts to perform actual deletion, if it fails - applies "soft" one.

For example:

<?php

// if there is a foreign key reference :
$customerWithReference = Customer::query()
    ->whereHas('purchases')
    ->first();

$customerWithReference->forceDelete(); // performs actual delete (triggers a database error actually)!

// if there is NO foreign key reference :
$customerWithoutReference = Customer::query()
    ->whereDoesntHave('purchases')
    ->first();

$customerWithoutReference->softDelete(); // performs "soft" delete!

// if there is a foreign key reference :
$customerWithReference = Customer::query()
    ->whereHas('purchases')
    ->first();

$customerWithReference->safeDelete(); // performs "soft" delete!

// if there is NO foreign key reference :
$customerWithoutReference = Customer::query()
    ->whereDoesntHave('purchases')
    ->first();

$customerWithoutReference->safeDelete(); // performs actual delete!