can i use softdeletes in adonis v5

[kmihiranga]

i have used Laravel many years and i used soft deletes to my many projects. can i know if there any way to use like this soft deletes in Adonis js. i read the documentation but i couldn't get any point using this feature.

[Obapelumi]

It's not a built-in feature in Adonisjs yet but you can use the hooks API to achieve this.
For example, in your migration, you add a deleted_at column:

    this.schema.createTable(this.tableName, (table) => {
      //...
      table.dateTime("deleted_at").nullable();
    });

Then in your model you add @beforeDelete, @beforeFind and @beforeFetch hooks lie so:

export default class User extends BaseModel {
  @beforeDelete()
  public static async softDelete (user: User) {
    user.deletedAt = DateTime.local().toSQL()
    await user.save()
  }

  @beforeFind()
  public static ignoreDeleted (query: ModelQueryBuilderContract<typeof User>) {
    query.whereNull('deleted_at')
  }

  @beforeFetch()
  public static ignoreDeleted (query: ModelQueryBuilderContract<typeof User>) {
    query.whereNull('deleted_at')
  }
}

I am not entirely sure about the behaviour of the @beforeDelete hook though. An alternative would be to override the default delete method in your model. for example:

  public async delete() {
    this.deletedAt = DateTime.local().toSQL()
    await this.save()
  }

[Obapelumi]

In my project, I've actually abstracted these out so they are re-usable. For example:

export const softDelete = async (row: LucidRow) => {
  row["deletedAt"] = DateTime.local().toSQL();
  await row.save();
};

export const softDeleteQuery = (
  query: ModelQueryBuilderContract<typeof BaseModel>
) => query.whereNull("deleted_at");

Then on the model:

export default class User extends BaseModel {
  @beforeDelete()
  public static softDelete = softDelete;

  @beforeFind()
  public static softDeletesFind = softDeleteQuery;

  @beforeFetch()
  public static softDeletesFetch = softDeleteQuery;
}

[kavience]

but it will make a error while the model has relationships, errors like this:

  "sqlMessage": "Column 'deletedAt' in where clause is ambiguous"

[Obapelumi]

Yes! Happens if you are querying from more than one table. You'll need to add the table name. To do that you can replace:

export const softDeleteQuery = (
  query: ModelQueryBuilderContract<typeof BaseModel>
) => query.whereNull("deleted_at");

with:

export const softDeleteQuery = (
  query: ModelQueryBuilderContract<typeof BaseModel>
) => {
  const column = `${query.model.table}.deleted_at`;
  query.whereNull(column);
}

[kavience]

Yes, I found it from https://github.com/lookinlab/adonis-lucid-soft-deletes

[darshithedpara]

https://github.com/lookinlab/adonis-lucid-soft-deletes Package is good but it works only with signal records when you try to mass delete

await Categories.query().whereIn('id', idsArray).delete()

it performs the hard delete.

See issue : lookinlab/adonis-lucid-soft-deletes#9

[varun-nambiar]

@kmihiranga where are you on this now?

Is soft delete a planned feature in adonis5?

[kavience]

https://github.com/adonisjs/core/issues/3411

Finally, I solved the problem temporarily in this way:

define Base in Models app/Models/Base.ts, and all models need soft delete extends Base.

import { DateTime } from 'luxon'
import { BaseModel, beforeFetch, beforeFind, column } from '@ioc:Adonis/Lucid/Orm'
import CamelCaseNamingStrategy from 'App/Helper/CamelCaseNamingStrategy'
import { softDelete, softDeleteQuery } from 'App/Services/SoftDelete'

export default class Base extends BaseModel {
  public static namingStrategy = new CamelCaseNamingStrategy() // this maybe not needed for you

  @column.dateTime({ serializeAs: null })
  public deletedAt: DateTime

  @beforeFind()
  public static softDeletesFind = softDeleteQuery

  @beforeFetch()
  public static softDeletesFetch = softDeleteQuery

  public async softDelete(column?: string) {
    await softDelete(this, column)
  }
}

app/Services/SoftDelete.ts

import { BaseModel, LucidRow, ModelQueryBuilderContract } from '@ioc:Adonis/Lucid/Orm'
import { DateTime } from 'luxon'

export const softDeleteQuery = (query: ModelQueryBuilderContract<typeof BaseModel>) => {
  query.whereNull(`${query.model.table}.deletedAt`)
}

export const softDelete = async (row: LucidRow, column: string = 'deletedAt') => {
  row[column] = DateTime.local()
  await row.save()
  return
}

hope can help someone.