php 63 lines · 10 steps

Building soft deletes as an Eloquent trait in Laravel

A reusable trait marks records deleted with a timestamp and hides them from queries instead of removing rows.

Explained by highlit

Laravel Intermediate traits soft-delete global-scope eloquent query-scopes

1<?php
2 
3namespace App\Models\Concerns;
4 
5use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Builder;
6use Illuminate\Support\Carbon;
7 
8trait SoftDeletable
9{
10    public static function bootSoftDeletable(): void
11    {
12        static::addGlobalScope('notTrashed', function (Builder $builder) {
13            $builder->whereNull($builder->getModel()->getQualifiedDeletedAtColumn());
14        });
15    }
16 
17    public function getDeletedAtColumn(): string
18    {
19        return defined(static::class . '::DELETED_AT') ? static::DELETED_AT : 'deleted_at';
20    }
21 
22    public function getQualifiedDeletedAtColumn(): string
23    {
24        return $this->qualifyColumn($this->getDeletedAtColumn());
25    }
26 
27    public function trashed(): bool
28    {
29        return ! is_null($this->{$this->getDeletedAtColumn()});
30    }
31 
32    public function delete(): bool
33    {
34        $column = $this->getDeletedAtColumn();
35        $this->{$column} = $this->freshTimestamp();
36 
37        return $this->save();
38    }
39 
40    public function restore(): bool
41    {
42        $this->{$this->getDeletedAtColumn()} = null;
43 
44        return $this->save();
45    }
46 
47    public function scopeWithTrashed(Builder $query): Builder
48    {
49        return $query->withoutGlobalScope('notTrashed');
50    }
51 
52    public function scopeOnlyTrashed(Builder $query): Builder
53    {
54        return $query
55            ->withoutGlobalScope('notTrashed')
56            ->whereNotNull($this->getQualifiedDeletedAtColumn());
57    }
58 
59    protected function freshTimestamp(): Carbon
60    {
61        return Carbon::now();
62    }
63}

01 / 01

STEP 01

Walkthrough

Space play ←→ step click any line

Three takeaways

1Soft deletion means overwriting delete to set a timestamp and filtering that column out of every query.
2A global scope applies a where clause automatically so trashed rows stay hidden without touching each query.
3Making the column name configurable through a constant keeps the trait reusable across models with different schemas.

Related explainers

php

<?php
 
class NameParser
{

Parsing a full name into components in PHP

string-parsing arrays normalization

Intermediate 8 steps

php

<?php
 
namespace App\Services\Checkout;

Validating coupons with Laravel's Pipeline

pipeline chain of responsibility transactions

Intermediate 7 steps

php

<?php
 
namespace App\Services;

How a password strength validator works in PHP

validation regular-expressions data-driven

Intermediate 8 steps

php

<?php
 
namespace App\Services;

Building a cached daily leaderboard in Laravel

caching aggregation eager-loading

Intermediate 9 steps

php

<?php
 
final class RotatingFileLogger
{

How a rotating file logger works in PHP

logging file-rotation io

Intermediate 9 steps

php

class TwoFactorController extends Controller
{
    public function show(Request $request): View|RedirectResponse
    {

Two-factor auth challenge flow in Laravel

authentication two-factor middleware

Intermediate 10 steps

Share this explainer

Here's the card — post it anywhere.

Building soft deletes as an Eloquent trait in Laravel — share card

Made with highlit — turn any snippet into a walkthrough like this in about a minute.

Explain your code