Rails - Oct 2009 - Re-tasking destroy contoller action...is this bad practice?

I''m trying to get some opinions on a design I''m floating
("rails way"
or not?).  Say I''ve got an Author model in my Blog application and I
want my administrators to be able to disable authors.  I don''t want to
delete authors because this would cause data integrity issues
(orphaned Author foreign key in the Post model).  So my plan is to re-
task the destroy method of the AuthorsContoller to allow an
administrator to set a disabled_at timestamp on an Author instead of
actually deleting him.

What are the disadvantages to this design?  One of the advantages to
this design that I see is that I don''t have to declare a new
controller method in my routes...it just fits into the REST design as
is, no?  Thanks for any advice.

Lee Smith wrote:
> I''m trying to get some opinions on a design I''m floating
("rails way"
> or not?).  Say I''ve got an Author model in my Blog application and
I
> want my administrators to be able to disable authors.  I don''t
want to
> delete authors because this would cause data integrity issues
> (orphaned Author foreign key in the Post model).  So my plan is to re-
> task the destroy method of the AuthorsContoller to allow an
> administrator to set a disabled_at timestamp on an Author instead of
> actually deleting him.
> 
You might want to do this by overriding Author#destroy instead, as 
acts_as_paranoid does.  That should make things a bit more airtight.
> What are the disadvantages to this design?  One of the advantages to
> this design that I see is that I don''t have to declare a new
> controller method in my routes...it just fits into the REST design as
> is, no?  Thanks for any advice.
Seems OK to me.  REST is about conceptual naming, not your 
implementation.

Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen-sbuyVjPbboAdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org
-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Ah, so simply redefining the destroy method in the model accomplishes
this?  Is it just another public method?  I don''t think I''ve
ever
overridden an activerecord method before...

Lee Smith wrote:
> Ah, so simply redefining the destroy method in the model accomplishes
> this?  
I would think so.
> Is it just another public method?  
Yes.
> I don''t think I''ve ever
> overridden an activerecord method before...
It might actually be better to use alias_method_chain, now that I think 
about it.

Or just install acts_as_paranoid.

Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen-sbuyVjPbboAdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.

Yeah, I started to install acts_as_paranoid but I read that it''s not
really updated anymore and may not even work with newer versions of
Rails?  I also looked at a revamped version of acts_as_paranoid called
is_paranoid that is supposed to use named_scopes but now it looks like
it has been abandoned by it''s author.

Which led me to roll my own...

Lee Smith wrote:
> Yeah, I started to install acts_as_paranoid but I read that it''s
not
> really updated anymore and may not even work with newer versions of
> Rails?  
Huh?  The repository on Github was last updated in April 2009.
> I also looked at a revamped version of acts_as_paranoid called
> is_paranoid that is supposed to use named_scopes but now it looks like
> it has been abandoned by it''s author.
> 
> Which led me to roll my own...
I''ve never used acts_as_paranoid, but I think many people still use it,
and the last update is recent enough that I assume it would work with 
Rails 2.3.

Best,
--
Marnen Laibow-Koser
http://www.marnen.org
marnen-sbuyVjPbboAdnm+yROfE0A@public.gmane.org

-- 
Posted via http://www.ruby-forum.com/.