user20230119
I have a recursive resource related to itself.
I can destroy a record with reference :parent, index?: true, on_delete: :delete and all nested children are deleted by PostgreSQL.
I later found cascade_destroy. What would it do differently? Would it run the destroy action for all nested children records? Is it useful for soft destroys?
destroy :destroy do
primary? true
change cascade_destroy(:children, action: :destroy)
end
I tried removing on_delete: :delete and using it, but it didn’t work?
Do I need on_delete: :delete or deferrable: true to use cascade_destroy?
{:error,
%Ash.Error.Invalid{
errors: [
%Ash.Error.Changes.InvalidAttribute{
field: :id,
message: "would leave records behind",
private_vars: [
constraint: "entities_parent_id_fkey",
constraint_type: :foreign_key,
detail: "Key (id)=(02df79f3-8b30-4288-bb50-ac446cc97f41) is still referenced from table \"entities\"."
],
value: nil,
splode: Ash.Error,
bread_crumbs: [],
vars: [],
path: [],
stacktrace: #Splode.Stacktrace<>,
class: :invalid
}
]
}}
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sevenseacat
The docs for
cascade_destroyexplain this - it’s useful when you need to run business logic on the records being destroyed, it will run adestroyaction for each of the records being destroyed, so you can hook in your own logic.If a database
on deletewill do what you need, use that instead as it will be much faster!If you want to run
cascade_destroyas an after_action (the default) then you’ll needdeferrable: :initiallyon the database reference, otherwise you get errors like the one you’ve seen. Alternatively, you can use a before_action (cascade_destroy(:stuff, after_action?: false)) and you won’t need to change the foreign key.garrison
Would this N+1 on a recursive foreign key? That is to say, would it perform the recursion in Elixir instead of in SQL?
zachdaniel
Yes, it would. Although assuming the actions can be done in bulk, N will be “depth” not “number of records * depth”
garrison
Yeah, I added the clarification because I realized I was abusing the term
I would imagine it would be more annoying to generate a recursive query, but I suppose it could be done. Not sure how portable recursive CTEs are though (I’ve only done them in Postgres).