Laravel – Soft Deleting

In addition to actually removing records from your database, Eloquent can also “soft delete” models. When models are soft deleted, they are not actually removed from your database. Instead, a deleted_at attribute is set on the model and inserted into the database. If a model has a non-null deleted_at value, the model has been soft deleted. To enable soft deletes for a model, use the Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes trait on the model and add the deleted_at column to your $dates property:

<?php

namespace App;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;

class Flight extends Model
{
    use SoftDeletes;

    /**
     * The attributes that should be mutated to dates.
     *
     * @var array
     */
    protected $dates = ['deleted_at'];
}

You should also add the deleted_at column to your database table. The Laravel schema builder contains a helper method to create this column:

Schema::table('flights', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->softDeletes();
});

Now, when you call the delete method on the model, the deleted_at column will be set to the current date and time. And, when querying a model that uses soft deletes, the soft deleted models will automatically be excluded from all query results.

To determine if a given model instance has been soft deleted, use the trashed method:

if ($flight->trashed()) {
    //
}