Why were the words delete & destroy chosen for those particular
operations? It always seems to me that they’re the wrong way round -
‘delete’ sounds like a careful removal, whereas ‘destroy’ sounds like
wanton removal without regard for the aftereffects. Are there legacy
reasons for the choice?
Jon
Jonathan del Strother wrote:
Why were the words delete & destroy chosen for those particular
operations? It always seems to me that they’re the wrong way round -
‘delete’ sounds like a careful removal, whereas ‘destroy’ sounds like
wanton removal without regard for the aftereffects. Are there legacy
reasons for the choice?
Think that “delete” comes from low level sql command “DELETE”, i.e. dumb
removal without any intervention from rails.
Zsombor
–
Company - http://primalgrasp.com
Thoughts - http://deezsombor.blogspot.com
Why were the words delete & destroy chosen for those particular
operations? It always seems to me that they’re the wrong way round -
‘delete’ sounds like a careful removal, whereas ‘destroy’ sounds like
wanton removal without regard for the aftereffects. Are there legacy
reasons for the choice?Jon
Haha, I’ve always thought the same thing 
I’m guessing only David
knows for sure.
–
Rick O.
http://weblog.techno-weenie.net
http://mephistoblog.com
Rick O. wrote:
Why were the words delete & destroy chosen for those particular
operations? It always seems to me that they’re the wrong way round -
‘delete’ sounds like a careful removal, whereas ‘destroy’ sounds like
wanton removal without regard for the aftereffects. Are there legacy
reasons for the choice?Jon
Haha, I’ve always thought the same thing
knows for sure.–
Rick O.
http://weblog.techno-weenie.net
http://mephistoblog.com
Newbie question:
What does “destroy” check for and/or fix up that might get skipped by
“delete”?
I struggled with this just a couple days ago and wound up apparently
picking the wrong one since I couldn’t find any documentation (as usual)
for the difference. Just something about “instantiates it first”; and
since I didn’t particularly need to instantiate it, I chose “delete”.
thanks,
jp
Jonathan del Strother wrote:
It always seems to me that they’re the wrong way round -
‘delete’ sounds like a careful removal, whereas ‘destroy’ sounds like
wanton removal without regard for the aftereffects.
I think of it the other way around - delete sounds precise and
smaller-scale, destroy sounds larger-scale and destroying something
destroys it and usually things around it. That said, I’m not crazy about
the term destroy – sound too video-gamey or something. 
Joe
On 8/31/06, Joe R. [email protected] wrote:
Joe
obliterate?
annihilate?
massacre?
decimate?
too much caffeine.
–
Rick O.
http://weblog.techno-weenie.net
http://mephistoblog.com
Jeff P. wrote:
What does “destroy” check for and/or fix up that might get skipped by
“delete”?I struggled with this just a couple days ago and wound up apparently
picking the wrong one since I couldn’t find any documentation (as usual)
for the difference. Just something about “instantiates it first”; and
since I didn’t particularly need to instantiate it, I chose “delete”.
Every ActiveRecord object can have ‘callbacks’ associated with it.
These let you attach behaviour to certain points in the object’s
lifecycle. For example, you could run validity checks on an object
before it is created, or you could make it so that only objects that
are in a certain state are allowed to be destroyed/deleted. Also, some
of the built-in ActiveRecord facilities (such as :dependent =>
:whatever) internally make use of the callback system to do their dirty
work.
When you use a ‘destroy’ method to delete an object or objects,
ActiveRecord goes through the full process of creating the object in
memory as an ActiveRecord object (AKA instantiating the object),
checking all the callbacks and running them if appropriate, and
deleting the row from the database.
In pseudo-ruby, calling User.destroy(1) does something like this:
user = User.find(1)
user.run_all_before_destroy_callbacks
user.execute_sql_to_delete_this_row
user.run_all_after_destroy_callbacks
On the other hand, calling a ‘delete’ method doesn’t bother with any of
this. It simply executes a SQL statement to delete the row(s) from the
database, and doesn’t give any other bit of ActiveRecord a chance to
get involved. So, calling User.delete(1) does something like this:
User.execute_sql_to_delete_row(1)
As a rule of thumb, I’d say you should always use ‘destroy’. I’d only
use ‘delete’ if I needed to for a specific performance optimisation,
and if I was absolutely sure that the class in question had no
callbacks or similar related behaviour attached to it.
Chris
Rick O. wrote:
On 8/31/06, Joe R. [email protected] wrote:
Joe
obliterate?
annihilate?
massacre?
decimate?
Or…
object.GlobalThermonuclearWar
Or…
object.kill
object.kill(:mafia) # I’ll kill you, your children, your children’s
children, …
Joe
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