Can I customize the behaviour of the DELETE button to soft delete instead?

[glaucocustodio]

Hey guys, is that possible to override the default behaviour of the delete button?

I'm using the https://github.com/jhawthorn/discard gem and would like to call discard on the record instead of destroy.

If overriding is not possible, can I hide the delete button at least so I can only keep a discard action visible?

[adrianthedev]

There are a few ways of doing that.

1. Use show_controls to hide the destroy button and add the soft-delete one on the show page
2. Use the authorization feature to remove the ability to destroy a record for a user

[glaucocustodio]

Thanks for the response @adrianthedev, I've chosen to use the authorization feature:

class ProjectPolicy < ApplicationPolicy
  def index? = true

  def show? = true

  def create? = true

  def new? = true

  def update? = true

  def edit? = true

  def destroy? = false

  class Scope < Scope
    def resolve
      scope.all
    end
  end
end

In development env it works fine (I don't see the bin icon), but in production I still see the bin icon, not sure why 🤔.
When I point my local application to production (RAILS_ENV=production bin/dev) I also see the bin icon.
I am trying to find out why by having a look at avo source code but haven't found the reason yet. Any clues?

[adrianthedev]

What license type are you using?
Authorization is a Pro feature.

If you are on Pro or Advanced, then ensure you have the license token added to the production environment too.

[glaucocustodio]

Sorry, we were using the old Avo 2 licence key, it has been sorted now, thank you.

[adrianthedev]

3. We'll take a PR to add support for a soft-delete button 👈 the best solution IMHO

[kira4ka]

@adrianthedev does this discussion may be implemented here?
Because it seems that there is already a custom behaviour but you are saying to use different approach.

[Paul-Bob]

@kira4ka overriding the destroy_record_action method on the desired controller should work perfectly for this scenario. Nice spot! Thanks for sharing it.

[adrianthedev]

Let's start a conversation here about how to implement the soft-delete (calling it SD from now on) functionality in Avo.

In the begining it looks like a simple problem that a developer only needs to add the soft-delete action to the UI, but it goes a bit deeper:

• how to scope the query to view the right records
• how to show the soft-deleted records
• how to show all the record
• how to configure to whom to show them (authorization)
• how to configure who can SD records (authorization)

My thoughts:

• the SD (soft-delete) button should be hidden by default
• the SD action should not be enabled by default
• as there isn't a native way to do this, it should be easy to use one of the gems that make this possible
• support custom implementations (this is already possible using custom controls and query modification)

Possible gems

• https://github.com/jhawthorn/discard
• https://github.com/grosser/soft_deletion
• https://github.com/rubysherpas/paranoia
• https://github.com/ActsAsParanoid/acts_as_paranoid

My gem recommendations

It seems like discard is the latest and has the most learnings from all the others.

I wouldn't use soft_deletion because of the API. No timestamp on SD column.

paranoia is not accepting new features, so wouldn't support it as a first-party gem.

paranoid doesn't seem to work with Rails 7 and onward.

https://www.ruby-toolbox.com/categories/Active_Record_Soft_Delete

I am looking for more things I might have overlooked. Let's keep this conversation going.

[kira4ka]

Discard gem took over from of act_as_paranoid and paranoia. So, I think that for the moment this will be the most requested integration.

how to scope the query to view the right records -> The scope is set on model. And AVO manages it well, as it doesn't show discarded records when using default_scope -> { kept } and shows them differently otherwise.
how to show the soft-deleted records`` how to show all the record -> Avo also allows the use of scoped views. So, If I want to see all records or not I have this possibility with scope function. Discard allows the use of different scopes such as kept, as discarded end so on.
how to configure to whom to show them (authorization) how to configure who can SD records (authorization) -> Simply working on Pundit policies should be enough for authorization.

the SD (soft-delete) button should be hidden by default -> Mmmh. why? For the end user this part should be transparent, as from the moment that the user wants to delete a record, they don't care about what's happening with this record on DB level. And in my opinion, if my model includes Discard::Model it means that my delete button should perform a SD.
It might be disabled by default, but having a quick option to enable it (without the need to modify actions or overriding methods) would be beneficial.