django-softdelete

Soft delete for Django ORM, with support for undelete.

This project provides undelete of soft-deleted objects, along with proper undeletion of related objects.

Inspired by http://codespatter.com/2009/07/01/django-model-manager-soft-delete-how-to-customize-admin/

Requirements

• Django 1.8
• django.contrib.contenttypes

Configuration

There are simple templates files in templates/. You will need to add Django's egg loader to use the templates as is:

TEMPLATE_LOADERS = (
...
    'django.template.loaders.eggs.Loader',
)

Add the project softdelete to your INSTALLED_APPS for through-the-web undelete support.

INSTALLED_APPS = (
...
    'django.contrib.contenttypes',
    'softdelete',
)

How It Works

Central to the ability to undelete a soft-deleted model is the concept of changesets. When you soft-delete an object, any objects referencing it via a ForeignKey, ManyToManyField, or OneToOneField will also be soft-deleted. This mimics the traditional CASCADE behavior of a SQL DELETE.

When the soft-delete is performed, the system makes a ChangeSet object which tracks all affected objects of this delete request. Later, when an undelete is requested, this ChangeSet is referenced to do a cascading undelete.

If you are undeleting an object that was part of a ChangeSet, that entire ChangeSet is undeleted.

Once undeleted, the ChangeSet object is removed from the underlying database with a regular ("hard") delete.

Testing

Can be tested directly with the following command:

django-admin.py test softdelete --settings="softdelete.settings"