# Re-tasking destroy contoller action...is this bad practice? **URL:** \ **Category:** Rails\ **Created:** [October 27, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-tasking-destroy-contoller-action-is-this-bad-practice/178002 "2009-10-27T20:15:40Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 6\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/coolmenu)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 8:15pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-tasking-destroy-contoller-action-is-this-bad-practice/178002/1 "2009-10-27T20:15:40Z")
I’m trying to get some opinions on a design I’m floating (“rails way” or not?). Say I’ve got an Author model in my Blog application and I want my administrators to be able to disable authors. I don’t want to delete authors because this would cause data integrity issues (orphaned Author foreign key in the Post model). So my plan is to re- task the destroy method of the AuthorsContoller to allow an administrator to set a disabled\_at timestamp on an Author instead of actually deleting him. What are the disadvantages to this design? One of the advantages to this design that I see is that I don’t have to declare a new controller method in my routes…it just fits into the REST design as is, no? Thanks for any advice. ---
**Author:** ![coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/coolmenu)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 8:22pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-tasking-destroy-contoller-action-is-this-bad-practice/178002/2 "2009-10-27T20:22:35Z")
Lee S. wrote: > I’m trying to get some opinions on a design I’m floating (“rails way” > or not?). Say I’ve got an Author model in my Blog application and I > want my administrators to be able to disable authors. I don’t want to > delete authors because this would cause data integrity issues > (orphaned Author foreign key in the Post model). So my plan is to re- > task the destroy method of the AuthorsContoller to allow an > administrator to set a disabled\_at timestamp on an Author instead of > actually deleting him. You might want to do this by overriding Author#destroy instead, as acts\_as\_paranoid does. That should make things a bit more airtight. > What are the disadvantages to this design? One of the advantages to > this design that I see is that I don’t have to declare a new > controller method in my routes…it just fits into the REST design as > is, no? Thanks for any advice. Seems OK to me. REST is about conceptual naming, not your implementation. ## Best, Marnen Laibow-Koser [http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org) removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/coolmenu)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 8:56pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-tasking-destroy-contoller-action-is-this-bad-practice/178002/3 "2009-10-27T20:56:39Z")
Ah, so simply redefining the destroy method in the model accomplishes this? Is it just another public method? I don’t think I’ve ever overridden an activerecord method before… ---
**Author:** ![coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/coolmenu)\ **Post date:** [October 27, 2009, 10:20pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-tasking-destroy-contoller-action-is-this-bad-practice/178002/4 "2009-10-27T22:20:45Z")
Lee S. wrote: > Ah, so simply redefining the destroy method in the model accomplishes > this? I would think so. > Is it just another public method? Yes. > I don’t think I’ve ever > overridden an activerecord method before… It might actually be better to use alias\_method\_chain, now that I think about it. Or just install acts\_as\_paranoid. ## Best, Marnen Laibow-Koser [http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org) removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid ---
**Author:** ![coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/coolmenu)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 5:43am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-tasking-destroy-contoller-action-is-this-bad-practice/178002/5 "2009-10-28T05:43:34Z")
Yeah, I started to install acts\_as\_paranoid but I read that it’s not really updated anymore and may not even work with newer versions of Rails? I also looked at a revamped version of acts\_as\_paranoid called is\_paranoid that is supposed to use named\_scopes but now it looks like it has been abandoned by it’s author. Which led me to roll my own… ---
**Author:** ![coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/eada6e/32.png) [@coolmenu](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/coolmenu)\ **Post date:** [October 28, 2009, 1:47pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/re-tasking-destroy-contoller-action-is-this-bad-practice/178002/6 "2009-10-28T13:47:24Z")
Lee S. wrote: > Yeah, I started to install acts\_as\_paranoid but I read that it’s not > really updated anymore and may not even work with newer versions of > Rails? Huh? The repository on Github was last updated in April 2009. > I also looked at a revamped version of acts\_as\_paranoid called > is\_paranoid that is supposed to use named\_scopes but now it looks like > it has been abandoned by it’s author. > > Which led me to roll my own… I’ve never used acts\_as\_paranoid, but I think many people still use it, and the last update is recent enough that I assume it would work with Rails 2.3. ## Best, Marnen Laibow-Koser [http://www.marnen.org](http://www.marnen.org) removed\_email\_address@domain.invalid