ActiveRecord Soft Delete Extension for Yii2

This extension provides support for ActiveRecord soft delete.

For license information check the LICENSE-file.

Installation

The preferred way to install this extension is through composer.

Either run

or add

to the require section of your composer.json.

Usage

This extension provides support for so called "soft" deletion of the ActiveRecord, which means record is not deleted from database, but marked with some flag or status, which indicates it is no longer active, instead.

This extension provides [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior]] ActiveRecord behavior for such solution support in Yii2. You may attach it to your model class in the following way:

There are 2 ways of "soft" delete applying:

• using softDelete() separated method
• mutating regular delete() method

Usage of softDelete() is recommended, since it allows marking the record as "deleted", while leaving regular delete() method intact, which allows you to perform "hard" delete if necessary. For example:

However, you may want to mutate regular ActiveRecord delete() method in the way it performs "soft" deleting instead of actual removing of the record. It is a common solution in such cases as applying "soft" delete functionality for existing code. For such functionality you should enable [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::$replaceRegularDelete]] option in behavior configuration:

Now invocation of the delete() method will mark record as "deleted" instead of removing it:

Heads up! In case you mutate regular ActiveRecord delete() method, it will be unable to function with ActiveRecord transactions feature, e.g. scenarios with [[\yii\db\ActiveRecord::OP_DELETE]] or [[\yii\db\ActiveRecord::OP_ALL]] transaction levels:

Querying "soft" deleted records

Obviously, in order to find only "deleted" or only "active" records you should add corresponding condition to your search query:

However, you can use [[yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteQueryBehavior]] to facilitate composition of such queries. The easiest way to apply this behavior is its manual attachment to the query instance at [[\yii\db\BaseActiveRecord::find()]] method. For example:

In case you already define custom query class for your active record, you can move behavior attachment there. For example:

Once being attached [[yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteQueryBehavior]] provides named scopes for the records filtering using "soft" deleted criteria. For example:

You may easily create listing filter for "deleted" records using filterDeleted() method:

This method applies notDeleted() scope on empty filter value, deleted() - on positive filter value, and no scope (e.g. show both "deleted" and "active" records) on negative (zero) value.

Note: [[yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteQueryBehavior]] has been designed to properly handle joins and avoid ambiguous column errors, however, there still can be cases, which it will be unable to handle properly. Be prepared to specify "soft deleted" conditions manually in case you are writing complex query, involving several tables with "soft delete" feature.

By default [[yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteQueryBehavior]] composes filter criteria for its scopes using the information from [[yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::$softDeleteAttributeValues]]. Thus you may need to manually configure filter conditions in case you are using sophisticated logic for "soft" deleted records marking. For example:

Tip: you may apply a condition, which filters "not deleted" records, to the ActiveQuery as default scope, overriding find() method. Also remember, that you may reset such default scope using onCondition() and where() methods with empty condition.

Smart deletion

Usually "soft" deleting feature is used to prevent the database history loss, ensuring data, which been in use and perhaps have a references or dependencies, is kept in the system. However sometimes actual deleting is allowed for such data as well. For example: usually user account records should not be deleted but only marked as "inactive", however if you browse through users list and found accounts, which has been registered long ago, but don't have at least single log-in in the system, these records have no value for the history and can be removed from database to save disk space.

You can make "soft" deletion to be "smart" and detect, if the record can be removed from the database or only marked as "deleted". This can be done via [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::$allowDeleteCallback]]. For example:

[[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::$allowDeleteCallback]] logic is applied in case [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::$replaceRegularDelete]] is enabled as well.

Handling foreign key constraints

In case of usage of the relational database, which supports foreign keys, like MySQL, PostgreSQL etc., "soft" deletion is widely used for keeping foreign keys consistence. For example: if user performs a purchase at the online shop, information about this purchase should remain in the system for the future bookkeeping. The DDL for such data structure may look like following one:

Thus, while set up a foreign key from 'purchase' to 'user', 'ON DELETE RESTRICT' mode is used. So on attempt to delete a user record, which have at least one purchase, a database error will occur. However, if user record have no external reference, it can be deleted.

Usage of [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::$allowDeleteCallback]] for such use case is not very practical. It will require performing extra queries to determine, if external references exist or not, eliminating the benefits of the foreign keys database feature.

Method [\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::safeDelete()]] attempts to invoke regular [[\yii\db\BaseActiveRecord::delete()]] method, and, if it fails with exception, falls back to [[yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::softDelete()]].

By default safeDelete() method catches [[\yii\db\IntegrityException]] exception, which means soft deleting will be performed on foreign constraint violation DB exception. You may specify another exception class here to customize fallback error level. For example: usage of [[\Throwable]] will cause soft-delete fallback on any error during regular deleting.

Record restoration

At some point you may want to "restore" records, which have been marked as "deleted" in the past. You may use restore() method for this:

By default attribute values, which should be applied for record restoration are automatically detected from [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::$softDeleteAttributeValues]], however it is better you specify them explicitly via [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::$restoreAttributeValues]].

Tip: if you enable [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::$useRestoreAttributeValuesAsDefaults]], attribute values, which marks restored record, will be automatically applied at new record insertion.

Events

By default [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::softDelete()]] triggers [[\yii\db\BaseActiveRecord::EVENT_BEFORE_DELETE]] and [[\yii\db\BaseActiveRecord::EVENT_AFTER_DELETE]] events in the same way they are triggered at regular delete().

Also [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior]] triggers several additional events in the scope of the owner ActiveRecord:

• [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::EVENT_BEFORE_SOFT_DELETE]] - triggered before "soft" delete is made.
• [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::EVENT_AFTER_SOFT_DELETE]] - triggered after "soft" delete is made.
• [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::EVENT_BEFORE_RESTORE]] - triggered before record is restored from "deleted" state.
• [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::EVENT_AFTER_RESTORE]] - triggered after record is restored from "deleted" state.

You may attach the event handlers for these events to your ActiveRecord object:

You may also handle these events inside your ActiveRecord class by declaring the corresponding methods:

Transactional operations

You can explicitly enclose [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::softDelete()]] method call in a transactional block, like following:

Alternatively you can use [[\yii\db\ActiveRecord::transactions()]] method to specify the list of operations, which should be performed inside the transaction block. Method [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::softDelete()]] responds both to [[\yii\db\ActiveRecord::OP_UPDATE]] and [[\yii\db\ActiveRecord::OP_DELETE]]. In case current model scenario includes at least of those constants, soft-delete will be performed inside the transaction block.

Note: method [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::safeDelete()]] uses its own internal transaction logic, which may conflict with automatic transactional operations. Make sure you do not run this method in the scenario, which is affected by [[\yii\db\ActiveRecord::transactions()]].

Optimistic locks

Soft-delete supports optimistic lock in the same way as regular [[\yii\db\ActiveRecord::save()]] method. In case you have specified version attribute via [[\yii\db\ActiveRecord::optimisticLock()]], [[\yii2tech\ar\softdelete\SoftDeleteBehavior::softDelete()]] will throw [[\yii\db\StaleObjectException]] exception in case of version number outdated. For example, in case you ActiveRecord is defined as following:

You can create delete link in following way:

Then you can catch [[\yii\db\StaleObjectException]] exception inside controller action code to resolve the conflict: