# Relationships and Deleting

**URL:** <https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relationships-and-deleting/137907>\
**Category:** Rails\
**Created:** [May 18, 2008, 2:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relationships-and-deleting/137907 "2008-05-18T02:46:00Z")\
**Posts on this page:** 3\
**Page:** 1

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**Author:** ![chalkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/8e7dd6/32.png) [@chalkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/chalkers)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2008, 2:46am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relationships-and-deleting/137907/1 "2008-05-18T02:46:00Z")

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I am playing around with relationships at the moment and am hitting a  
wall.

I have a group.

class Group \< ActiveRecord::Base  
has\_many :contacts  
end

and a contact.

class Contact \< ActiveRecord::Base  
belongs\_to :group  
end

If I destroy group it doesn’t destroy contacts in the group.

Am I missing something obvious?

Thanks!

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![chalkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/8e7dd6/32.png) [@chalkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/chalkers)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2008, 3:15am UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relationships-and-deleting/137907/2 "2008-05-18T03:15:51Z")

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To delete contacts when the group is deleted:

has\_many :contacts, :dependent =\> :destroy

or if you don’t use callbacks (before\_destroy, after\_destroy) in  
Contact,  
this is faster:

has\_many :contacts, :dependent =\> :delete\_all

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<div class="post-metadata">

**Author:** ![chalkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/letter_avatar_proxy/v4/letter/c/8e7dd6/32.png) [@chalkers](https://www.ruby-forum.com/u/chalkers)\
**Post date:** [May 18, 2008, 2:44pm UTC](https://www.ruby-forum.com/t/relationships-and-deleting/137907/3 "2008-05-18T14:44:56Z")

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Thanks lx Quic!

Very informative.