Destroying Models

There are two ways to destroy a model, one when we have an instance of the model and the other when we don't.

Delete documents

If we don't care of having an instance of the model, we can use the delete method to delete documents from the database.

await User.delete({ name: "John" });

This will delete all the documents that match the query and return the number of documents deleted.

If we want to delete a document using id or _id, simply pass the value directly to the delete method.

await User.delete(1);

Please note that _id must be a string or an instance of ObjectId class.

Destroy model

If we already have an instance of the model we can use destroy method.

import { User } from "./models/User";

const user = await User.find(1);

await user.destroy();

This will delete the document from the database but you still can work with the instance of the model.

tip

If you tried to save the model after destroying it, it will throw an error.

Recycle bin

When using the destroy model, by default the model is actually deleted but before that a copy of the model document is taken and moved to the trash collection. This is done to prevent accidental deletion of documents.

The trash collection name is the model's collection name suffixed with Trash. For example, if the model's collection name is users, the trash collection name will be usersTrash.

Restoring documents

If documents are deleted using Recycle bin destroy method, you can restore them using the restore method.

await User.restore(1);

This will restore the document with the given id and return the restored document.

Restoring multiple documents

If you want to restore all the documents in the trash collection, you can use the restoreAll method.

const restoredUsers = await User.restoreAll();

If you want to restore specific documents, you can pass a query to the restoreAll method.

const restoredUsers = await User.restoreAll({ name: "John" });

Model Delete Strategies

We saw earlier the moveToTrash strategy which is the default strategy. There are two other strategies that you can use.

You can override the model's default delete strategy by setting the deleteStrategy property on the model.

import { Model, ModelDeleteStrategy } from "@warlock.js/cascade";

export class User extends Model {
  /**
   * The collection name
   */
  public static collection = "users";

  /**
   * The delete strategy
   * Delete the documents forever.
   */
  public static deleteStrategy = ModelDeleteStrategy.hardDelete;
}

hardDelete strategy

This strategy will delete the document without moving it to the trash collection, so it's gone forever.

import { Model, ModelDeleteStrategy } from "@warlock.js/cascade";

export class User extends Model {
  /**
   * The collection name
   */
  public static collection = "users";

  /**
   * The delete strategy
   * Delete the documents forever.
   */
  public static deleteStrategy = ModelDeleteStrategy.hardDelete;
}

Now whenever you call the destroy method, the document will be deleted forever.

await User.find(1).destroy();

softDelete strategy

This strategy will add a deletedAt field to the document and set it to the current date and time. This field will be used to determine if the document is deleted or not.

import { Model, ModelDeleteStrategy } from "@warlock.js/cascade";

export class User extends Model {
  /**
   * The collection name
   */
  public static collection = "users";

  /**
   * The delete strategy
   * Delete the documents forever.
   */
  public static deleteStrategy = ModelDeleteStrategy.softDelete;
}

Now whenever you call the destroy method, the document will be soft deleted.

tip

You can use the restore and restoreAll methods to restore the documents, this will remove the deletedAt field from the documents.

Now whenever you use any listing method the soft deleted documents will be excluded from the results.

info

If you want to include the deleted documents in your results, pass withDeleted option to the listing filters with true value.

// fetch all users including the deleted ones
await User.list({ withDeleted: true });

// fetch all users excluding the deleted ones
await User.list();