ruby 36 lines · 3 tabs

Soft deletes with paranoia gem

Alex Kumar Jan 2026

3 tabs

class AddDeletedAtToPosts < ActiveRecord::Migration[6.1]
  def change
    add_column :posts, :deleted_at, :datetime
    add_index :posts, :deleted_at
  end
end

class Post < ApplicationRecord
  acts_as_paranoid

  belongs_to :author, class_name: 'User'
  has_many :comments, dependent: :destroy

  validates :title, presence: true

  # Custom scope to find recently deleted posts
  scope :recently_deleted, -> { only_deleted.where('deleted_at > ?', 7.days.ago) }
end

module Api
  module V1
    class PostsController < BaseController
      def destroy
        post = current_user.posts.find(params[:id])
        post.destroy

        render json: { message: 'Post deleted successfully' }, status: :ok
      end

      def restore
        post = current_user.posts.with_deleted.find(params[:id])
        post.restore

        render json: post, status: :ok
      end
    end
  end
end

3 files · ruby Explain with highlit

Hard deletes make data recovery impossible and complicate audit trails. Soft deletes mark records as deleted without removing them from the database, preserving history and enabling undo functionality. The paranoia gem adds a deleted_at timestamp column and overrides ActiveRecord's destroy method to set the timestamp instead of running DELETE. Queries automatically exclude soft-deleted records unless you use with_deleted or only_deleted scopes. This is valuable for user accounts, content moderation, and any domain where accidental deletion is costly. The downside is that unique indexes need to account for deleted records, and table sizes grow over time. I periodically archive truly old deleted records to separate tables.

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