Filtering 'hidden' records

Rails
1

A common pattern I’ve used in database application development is some
form
of ‘state’ field that is used to administratively manage records.
Rather
than deleting records I will mark them with a state of ‘deleted’ and it
becomes an administrative task to actually later remove and/or archive
them
from the database. That way data never just disappears but there is a
clear
audit-trail and archive of all data.

This implies that from an application view the records with a ‘deleted’
state should disappear as if they are truly deleted. All queries must
filter out those deleted records as if they don’t exist.

Therefore there should be some filter automatically added to every query
in
the rails apps to be sure to exclude those records (WHERE state NOT
'deleted). I would prefer that this is transparent and that the
application doesn’t have to always add this filter but that it is
automatically handled by ActionRecord.

What is the best way to achieve this with Rails? Is there already
native
ActionRecord capability for this or perhaps a plugin available for this
functionality?

Thanks,

Mark

2

Thank you, it appears that acts_as_paranoid is exactly what I’m looking
for.

The following statement in the docs, “Most normal model operations will
work, but there will be some oddities,” does concern me a bit since
those
‘oddities’ are not at all defined.

  • Mark
3

On Feb 11, 2008, at 24:20 , Mark wrote:

queries must filter out those deleted records as if they don’t exist.

Therefore there should be some filter automatically added to every
query in the rails apps to be sure to exclude those records (WHERE
state NOT 'deleted). I would prefer that this is transparent and
that the application doesn’t have to always add this filter but that
it is automatically handled by ActionRecord.

What is the best way to achieve this with Rails? Is there already
native ActionRecord capability for this or perhaps a plugin
available for this functionality?

I think the canonical solution in Rails is acts_as_paranoid.

– fxn