Django Easy Soft Delete

Goal

The Default behavior for Django model instances delete action is permanently delete a resource, means to remove the resource from the database completely with no option for recovery.

Some users want a “recycling bin” or “archival” feature which allows segregating active objects from non-active ones, and soft-deletion is one way of accomplishing this. The capability to delete and restore data needs to be available. That's what django-easy-softdelete package offer.

Description

Using Django Easy Soft Delete package when model instances are soft deleted(default behavior), they are not actually removed from your database. Instead, a is_deleted flag and deleted_at attributes are set on the model and inserted into the database. If a model has a non-null is_deleted and deleted_at values, the model instance has been soft deleted.

This package gives Django model instances the ability to be soft-deleted(masked or hidden), and it gives the ability to restore any soft-deleted objects, ...obviously it gives the ability to be normally deleted (hard delete)

You have to take into consideration the following:

• When the object hard deleted, that would delete all related objects.
• You can't use it as is for many-to-many relation, obviously.
• You could use soft-delete-cascade, restore and restore-related-objects correctly using model instance.

The only thing that you have to do to utilize the package functionalities is inheriting from django_softdelete.models.SoftDeleteModel

Example

.. code-block:: python

# imports
from django_softdelete.models import SoftDeleteModel
from django.utils import timezone

# models
class Author(SoftDeleteModel):
    _soft_delete_cascade = True
    _restore_soft_deleted_related_objects = True

    name = models.CharField(max_length=50)

class Profile(SoftDeleteModel):
    author = models.OneToOneField(Author, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    publish_books = PositiveIntegerField(default=0)

class Book(SoftDeleteModel):
    author = models.ForeignKey(Author, on_delete=models.CASCADE)
    publish_date = models.DateField()


# Example of use
>>> author = Author(name='mohammad')
>>> author.save()

>>> book = Book(author=author, publish_date=timezone.now())
>>> book.save()

>>> profile = Profile(author=author, publish_books=+1)
>>> profile.save()

>>> Author.objects.all().values()
<SoftDeleteQuerySet [{'id': 1, 'is_deleted': False, 'deleted_at': None, 'name': 'mohammad'}]>


# as we set _soft_delete_cascade=True then any objects related 
to author beside the author object will be soft-deleted.
>>> author.delete()

# All objects will be soft-deleted
>>> Author.objects.count() 
0
>>> Profile.objects.count()
0
>>> Book.objects.count()
0

# If you would get soft-deleted objects, you could use all_objects manager
>>> Author.all_objects.count() 
1
>>> Profile.all_objects.count() 
1
>>> Book.all_objects.count() 
1

# Author object will be soft-deleted only
>>> Author.objects.filter(id=author.id).delete()
    
# List of author objects will be soft-deleted
>>> Author.objects.filter(id__in=[1,]).delete()
>>> Author.all_objects.all().values()
<SoftDeleteQuerySet [{'id': 1, 'is_deleted': True, 'deleted_at': datetime.datetime(2020, 5, 20, 10, 51, 52, 50725, tzinfo=<UTC>), 'name': 'mohammad'}]>

# You could inquire about non soft-deleted objects
>>> Author.objects.all().alive().count()
0

 # as we set _restore_soft_deleted_related_objects=True then any objects related 
 to author beside the author object will be restored.
 >>> author = Author.all_objects.get(id=1)
 >>> author.restore()

>>> authors = Author.objects.all()
>>> authors.values()
<SoftDeleteQuerySet [{'id': 1, 'is_deleted': False, 'deleted_at': None, 'name': 'mohammad'}]>
>>> authors
<SoftDeleteQuerySet [<Author: Author object (1)>]>
>>> author = authors.first()
>>> author
<Author: Author object (1)>
>> author.book_set.first()
<Book: Book object (1)>
>> author.profile
<Profile: Profile object (1)>   

# This will be hard deleted from the database.
>>> author.hard_delete()
>>> Author.objects.all()
<SoftDeleteQuerySet []>

Installation

Installing from pypi (using pip). ::

pip install django-easy-softdelete

The application doesn't have any special requirement or configurations.

Licensing

Please see the LICENSE file.

Contacts

Email: abukhashabehmohammad@gmail.com

GitHub: https://github.com/mabukhashabeh/