Rails Trash

Simple trash for your models setting the deleted_at to Time.now.utc.

Installing

Add it to your Gemfile:

gem 'rails-trash', :github => 'trilogyinteractive/rails-trash'

Setup

Create a migration to add a deleted_at column for all trashable models:

add_column :post, :deleted_at, :timestamp
add_column :comments, :deleted_at, :timestamp

Add the has_trash module, a default scope, and attr_accessible to each trashable model:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_trash
  default_scope where(arel_table[:deleted_at].eq(nil)) if arel_table[:deleted_at]
  attr_accessible :deleted_at
end

Usage

Trashing and Restoring Records

Trash a record. This will also trash all :dependent => :destroy associations.

Post.find(1).destroy

Restore a record from trash. This will also restore all :dependent => :destroy associations.

Post.restore(1)

Finding Records

Get all active records:

Post.active

Get all deleted records:

Post.deleted

Find a record in the trash:

Post.find_in_trash(1)

Test if a record is trashed:

Post.find(1).trashed?

Disable / Enable Trash

The trash is enabled by default on all records. The trash can be disabled and re-enabled on any instance of a trashable model.

Usage

Disable the trash. This allows a record to be permanently deleted:

Post.disable_trash

Enable the trash. This will prevent a record from being permanently deleted:

Post.enable_trash

Associations

Models that declare :dependent => :destroy associations will have the trash cascade down all of those associations. For example:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
    has_many :comments, :dependent => :destroy
end

class Comment < ActiveRecord::Base
    belongs_to : post
end

Calling #destroy on any post will trash that post's comments. Likewise, calling #restore on any post will restore that post's comments.

Similarly, calling #disable_trash on any post will disable the trash for that post's comments. And calling #enable_trash on any post will enable the trash for that post's comments.

Callbacks

Two new callbacks are defined: before_restore and after_restore.

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_trash

  before_restore { |record| puts "About to restore Post #{record.id}." }
  after_restore { |record| puts "Post #{record.id} was restored." }
end

Tests

Run tests with:

rake test

Copyright (c) 2011-2013 Francesc Esplugas Marti, released under the MIT license