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Last updated: 29 Jan 2019

content-publisher: 8. Restricted Deletion

Date: 2019-01-24

Context

We use foreign keys to help enforce database integrity e.g.

# ensure creator_id on a document matches a row in the users table
# when we try to delete a user, raise an error if its the creator of a document
add_foreign_key "documents", "users", column: "creator_id", on_delete: :restrict

There are other on_delete behaviours instead of restrict.

# when we delete a user, set creator_id to NULL on all of its documents
add_foreign_key "documents", "users", column: "creator_id", on_delete: :nullify

# when we delete a user, also delete all of its document
add_foreign_key "documents", "users", column: "creator_id", on_delete: :cascade

Different options are appropriate depending on the foreign key.

  • restrict is a good choice in a child/parent scenario, where deleting a child should be restricted if it would make the parent invalid. For example, we should not be able to delete an ActiveStorage blob if its parent image still exists.
  • nullify works well if the relationship is optional. For example, our code doesn't currently require a document to have a creator, so it might be reasonable to creator_id on document to NULL if we delete a user for some reason.
  • cascade is a good choice in a parent/child scenario, where it makes sense to delete the child when we delete the parent. For example, if we delete a document for some reason, it also makes sense to delete the editions.

Decision

Currently, we don't have any real-world scenarios for deleting stuff from the database. Therefore, we should do the simplest thing and restrict on all foreign key delete actions. restrict is actually the default, but we should continue to specify it explicitly to indicate a conscious decision.

Status

Accepted

Consequences

Restricting all foreign key deletions will make it difficult to delete anything. For example, we might be required to delete a user record in order to remove their personal data. We intend to revisit this decision if it becomes a pain point.

One situation where we may want to delete data is in our development environments. This can also be achieved by resetting the database - we should avoid making deletion more permissive in production for the convenience of devlopment.