Eloquent With Trashed with including soft deleted records

TL;DR Laravel's Eloquent provides a feature called "soft deletes" which allows you to mark records as deleted without actually removing them from the database, enabling easy retrieval and restoration of deleted data.

Soft Deletes in Laravel: Eloquent's Trashed Feature

As developers, we've all encountered the problem of permanently deleting data from our databases. What if you wanted to "un-delete" a record that was mistakenly removed? Or perhaps you need to keep track of changes made to your database over time. This is where soft deletes come in – a feature provided by Eloquent's Trashed functionality in Laravel.

What are Soft Deletes?

Soft deletes allow you to mark records as deleted, but don't actually remove them from the database. Instead, they're moved to a hidden state, often referred to as "trash." This way, if you need to retrieve or restore a deleted record, it's still easily accessible.

Enabling Trashed in Eloquent

To start using soft deletes with your Laravel application, you'll need to add the UseSoftDeletes trait to your model. For example:

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;

class User extends Model
{
    use \Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;

    // ...
}

The Soft Delete Process

When a record is marked as deleted, Eloquent doesn't actually remove it from the database. Instead, it updates two timestamps: deleted_at and updated_at. The deleted_at timestamp stores the date and time of deletion, while updated_at remains unchanged.

Here's what happens when you call $user->delete(); on a model with soft deletes enabled:

1. Eloquent updates the deleted_at timestamp to the current date and time.
2. The record is marked as deleted in your database table.
3. The rest of the model's data remains intact, except for any relationships that are automatically nulled (more on this later).

Retrieving Trashed Records

To retrieve trashed records, you can use Eloquent's withTrashed() and onlyTrashed() methods:

$users = User::withTrashed()->get();

This will return all users, including those that have been marked as deleted.

If you only want to see the trashed records without any other data:

$trashedUsers = User::onlyTrashed()->get();

Restoring Trashed Records

To restore a trashed record, simply call the restore() method on it:

$user->restore();

This will remove the deleted_at timestamp and "undelete" the record.

Tips and Tricks

• Make sure to use soft deletes on models that have a significant number of records or complex relationships.
• Keep in mind that soft deletes don't actually reduce storage space, as all records are still stored in your database.
• To automatically nulify relationships when deleting a model, add the cascadeDeletes method to your relationship definition.

In conclusion, Eloquent's Trashed feature provides an elegant solution for managing data deletion and restoration. With soft deletes enabled, you can easily keep track of changes made to your database over time – making it easier to maintain your application's integrity and recover from any mistakes that may arise.