Support for with_deleted option on associations

[noctivityinc]

Is there anyone to add support for with_deleted for associations the same was acts_as_paranoid does so that we can query an associated model and return everything including what was deleted?

[radar]

That's... already supported? I thought? post.comments.with_deleted?

[noctivityinc]

Sorry for not being clear. I mean in the belongs_to or has_many declarations.

[NicoBleh]

belongs_to :something, with_deleted: true

Would be really helpful when you have like:

delegate :stuff, to: :something

an something is soft_deleted

[SebastianVomMeer]

Rails 4 (not sure about 3) allows custom scopes for associations:

belongs_to :whatever, -> { with_deleted }

Therefore support should be fine there.

[yonahforst]

using with_deleted in the association scope doesn't work, but I think it's a rails bug: https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/13775

[SebastianVomMeer]

We use the scope approach with Rails 4.1.6 and haven't had any problems yet.

[yonahforst]

@SebastianG86 does it also work with joins and includes? i.e.

   class Chapter < ActiveRecord::Base
     belongs_to :book, -> { with_deleted}
   end

   Chapter.joins(:book)

in my case (also rails 4.1.6) I can call chapter.book and will properly unscope :deleted_at, but when I call Chapter.joins(:book) it won't return chapters from deleted books

[dquimper]

Anyone has a workaround for this?

[NicoBleh]

My approach is to unscope the :deleted_at in the query chain like:

belongs_to :messages_with_deleted, -> { unscope(where: :deleted_at) }, class_name: 'Message', foreign_key: :message_id

[dquimper]

Thanks for responding on Christmas Day!

Unfortunately, your solutions doesn't work for me. Maybe because my project is still on Rails 4.0.x. But you helped me understand something that I didn't know and that redirected me to renewed Google searches.

I ended up using the abstractcoder solution presented here: http://stackoverflow.com/questions/19291181/rails-4-activerecord-includesmodel-without-its-default-scope

It's not pretty, but until the Rails team fixes https://github.com/rails/rails/issues/13775, it will have to do.

Thanks and Merry Christmas to you!.

[nornagon]

This is still broken for me in rails 4.2, but this workaround worked for me:

has_many :foos
def foos
  super.with_deleted
end

[nimzco]

My app uses Rails 4.1.8 and neither @NicoBleh or @nornagon solutions work for me... Any update on the situation?

I ended doing...:

def course
  Course.with_deleted.find(course_id)
end

EDIT

This is a bad idea, because if you do your_instance.course = Course.new, your_instance.course will fail because course is not persisted...

[nimzco]

Here is a solution:

  def course
    Course.unscoped{ super }
  end

[mamantoha]

@NicoBleh thanks!

[akaspick]

Using the example in the README, eager loading the association doesn't work if I reference the association in a where clause.

class Person < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :group, -> { with_deleted }
end

Person.includes(:group).all # works
Person.includes(:group).where(group: {id: 5}).all # doesn't work

If I reference the association in the where clause the resulting eager loading SQL adds the "deleted_at is NULL" clause to my query, which I DO NOT want.

LEFT OUTER JOIN "groups" ON "groups"."id" = "people"."group_id" AND "groups"."deleted_at" IS NULL

Is this a rails bug? Or a paranoia bug?

[akaspick]

Looks like it's a Rails bug. Specifically https://github.com/rails/rails/pull/16531

[hisatake]

Is there any solutions when I reference association in a where clause?

[sealocal]

class Chapter < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_paranoid

  # This would override the deleted scope at all times
  # I believe the opened issue was intended for optionally unscoping the query
  belongs_to :book, -> { with_deleted }
  # As far as I can tell, this simply does not work in Rail 4.0.x
  belongs_to :book_with_deleted, -> { unscope(where: :deleted_at) }, class_name: 'Book', foreign_key: :book_id

  # I've found this to be the best option for my application so far.
  # This method returns the Book that this Chapter belongs to, whether it was deleted or not,
  # but is explicit, just like calling with_deleted on a relation.
  def deleted_book
    Book.with_deleted.find( self.chapter_id )
  end
end

[wynksaiddestroy]

The only working solution I've found so far is to manually specify the join:

Chapter.joins('INNER JOIN "books" ON "books"."id" = "chapters"."book_id"')

[dgmora]

Reading through the issue I don't fully understand if this is a bug in paranoia, a bug in rails, or an expected behaviour. The linked issues for rails are closed, so I assume that's not blocking anything. I would expect that if a record is deleted, when I access a deleted object's belongs_to or a has_many, I get either all records, or the deleted records. If I have a deleted post and I access a user post.user, the user is nil. with_deleted on the association fails.

Currently I'm using a workaround like this:

# post.rb

belongs_to :post

def user
  deleted? ? User.unscoped { super } : super
end

I'm using paranoia 2.3.1 and rails 5.1.2.

Anyway, thanks for the great job your're doing here guys! 🙂

[Schwad]

It's January 2018 (happy 4th anniversary guys!) and I just wanted to write a massive thank you to @wynksaiddestroy for the solution two comments above, nothing else but that worked!

I was in a situation with MyObject.joins(:related_deleted_objects).first and not getting any my_objects where the related_deleted_object was destroyed. whew! :)

[wynksaiddestroy]

@Schwad: You're welcome. Always happy to help someone out.

[jason0415]

I'm on Rails 5.0.7. Bellowing code works for me.

class Client
  has_one :contact_detail, -> { unscope(where: :deleted_at) }
end

class ContactDetail
  belongs_to :client, with_deleted: true
end

When you call Client.last.contact_detail, it will give you deleted contact_detail.