Chris AdamsSep 27, 2023

God dammit past me - why didn't you bookmark the "how to use django and a deleted_items table" article to do easy-to-manage soft deletes in a system?

The general idea was to have a deleted_items table, available in django admin, that items are copied to when you call delete() on an object. It's easy to administer and you don't need loads of special edge cases in code.

This ring any bells, internet ppl?

P.S. Yes this is not perfect. The article goes into detail about these tradeoffs too.

Show threadMark Steadman
@mrchrisadams I like this idea. I've just been adding `trashed` properties to models where I want them to be recoverable by users, but that always involves remembering to alter your queries everywhere to make sure they exclude trashed items!
Sep 27, 2023 at 12:54pmWeb
Show threadChris AdamsSep 27, 2023

@mark exactly. It also makes it easy to tell when you really really definitelty have deleted something, because there's only one table to look inside.

I think the article mentioned using a JSON binary field in the table to make it easy to dump serialised versions of an object in there too.

Show threadBret MogilefskySep 27, 2023
@mrchrisadams @mark Off the top of my head but: Create a view of the model table that explicitly excludes rows where "trashed" is true. Use that view everywhere, rather than the table. Now you never have to modify other queries to know about the underlying model table and trashed state (except when trashing a row).
Show threadBret MogilefskySep 27, 2023
@mrchrisadams @mark I don't think I'd want to persist deleted rows in some other form to a different table, because it might break referential integrity unless you do a lot of special-case handling. But I haven't thought much about it beyond that gut feeling, so maybe there's a reason that wouldn't be an issue.
Show threadBret MogilefskySep 27, 2023
@mrchrisadams @mark I guess this might be a good case for replacing refs to a deleted row with refs to a sentinel row in the same table. That way referential integrity is maintained and you can say "deleted item" in results and UI without special cases. Also you can _really_ delete the row rather than doing a soft delete. 🤔