Soft-delete

• Who maintains the package – Jam

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What is this package?

Soft Delete is an easy way to add soft deletes to your Meteor app. Its key features are:

• Zero config needed (though you can customize)
• Isomorphic so that it works with Optimistic UI
• Automatically overrides removeAsync to make it a soft delete
• Automatically adds the soft delete flag on insertAsync and to the filter for your queries, e.g. .find, so you don't need to make any changes to them
• Recover soft deleted docs with recoverAsync collection method
• Explicitly soft delete with softRemoveAsync collection method (optional)
• Optionally add a deletedAt timestamp
• Optionally exclude specific collections
• Compatible with Meteor 2.8.1+ and 3.0+

Note: Alternative to soft deletion is to archive documents in your collection. You can use jam:archive package for that. Be sure to compare those two approaches to pick the solution best suited for your application.

How to download it?

Add the package to your app

meteor add jam:soft-delete

Sources

• GitHub repository

How to use it?

Deleting permanently

By default, this package overrides the removeAsync collection method so that it soft deletes the document(s) with a boolean flag rather that removing them from the database. To delete permanently, pass in the option soft: false, e.g.:

Collection.removeAsync(/* your filter */, { soft: false })

If you prefer, you can prevent overriding the removeAsync by setting overrideRemove: false. See Configuring for more details.

Explicitly soft deleting

If you prefer, you can explicity use softRemoveAsync, e.g.:

Collection.softRemoveAsync(/* your filter */)

Recovering a document

To recover a soft deleted document, use recoverAsync, e.g.:

Collection.recoverAsync(/* your filter */)

Configuring (optional)

If you like the defaults, then you won't need to configure anything. But there is some flexibility in how you use this package.

Here are the global defaults:

const config = {
  deleted: 'deleted', // the field name used for the boolean flag. you can update to your preference, e.g. 'isDeleted'
  deletedAt: '', // add the name of the field you'd like to use for a deletedAt timestamp, e.g. 'deletedAt', if you want to include it on your docs
  autoFilter: true, // automatically adds the { [deleted]: false } filter to your queries
  overrideRemove: true, // overrides the Collection.removeAsync method to make it a soft delete instead
  exclude: ['roles', 'role-assignment'] // exclude specific collections from using soft delete. defaults to excluding the collections created the meteor roles package
};

To change the global defaults, use:

// put this in a file that's imported on both the client and server
import { SoftDelete } from 'meteor/jam:soft-delete';

SoftDelete.configure({
  // ... change the defaults here ... //
});