I currently use Devise for user registration/authentication in a Rails project. When a user wants to cancel their account, the user object is destroyed, which leaves my application in an undesired state.
What is the easiest way to implement a "soft delete", i.e. only removing personal data and marking the user as deleted? I still want to keep all record associations.
I assume I will have to first introduce a new "deleted" column for users. But then I am stuck with this default code in the user's profile view:
<p>Unhappy? <%= link_to "Cancel my account", registration_path(resource_name), :confirm => "Are you sure?", :method => :delete %>.</p>
Where can I find the :delete
method? How should I overwrite the default Devise methods?
I could advise overriding destroy
method on your User model to simply do update_attribute(:deleted_at, Time.current)
(instead of actually destroying), but this deviation from standard API could become burdensome in the future, so here's how to modify the controller.
Devise has a bunch of default controllers out of the box. The best way to customize them is to create your own controller inheriting the corresponding devise controller. In this case we are talking about Devise::RegistrationsController
— which is easily recognized by looking at source. So create a new controller.
class RegistrationsController < Devise::RegistrationsController
end
Now we have our own controller fully inheriting all the devise-provided logic. Next step is to tell devise to use it instead of the default one. In your routes you have devise_for
line. It should be changed to include registrations controller.
devise_for :users, :controllers => { :registrations => 'registrations' }
This seems strange, but it makes sense because by default it's 'devise/registrations', not simply 'registrations'.
Next step is to override the destroy
action in registrations controller. When you use registration_path(:user), :method => :delete
— that's where it links. To destroy
action of registrations controller.
Currently devise does the following.
def destroy
resource.destroy
set_flash_message :notice, :destroyed
sign_out_and_redirect(self.resource)
end
We can instead use this code. First let's add new method to User
model.
class User < ActiveRecord::Base
def soft_delete
# assuming you have deleted_at column added already
update_attribute(:deleted_at, Time.current)
end
end
# Use this for Devise 2.1.0 and newer versions
class RegistrationsController < Devise::RegistrationsController
def destroy
resource.soft_delete
Devise.sign_out_all_scopes ? sign_out : sign_out(resource_name)
set_flash_message :notice, :destroyed if is_navigational_format?
respond_with_navigational(resource){ redirect_to after_sign_out_path_for(resource_name) }
end
end
# Use this for older Devise versions
class RegistrationsController < Devise::RegistrationsController
def destroy
resource.soft_delete
set_flash_message :notice, :destroyed
sign_out_and_redirect(resource)
end
end
Now you should be all set. Use scopes to filter out deleted users.