How to implement soft delete in Django

In this post, I will show you how to implement soft delete in Django. Soft delete is a technique used to mark a record as deleted without actually removing it from the database. This is useful when you want to keep a record of deleted items or when you want to restore them later.

Step 1: We will create a custom manager to handle soft delete

class SoftDeletableManager(models.Manager):
    def get_queryset(self):
        return super().get_queryset().filter(deleted_at__isnull=True)

Step 2: We will create a mixin to add soft delete functionality to models

class SoftDeletableModel(models.Model):
    deleted_at = models.DateTimeField(null=True, default=None)
    objects = SoftDeletableManager()
    all_objects = models.Manager()

    class Meta:
        abstract = True

    def delete(self):
        self.deleted_at = timezone.now()
        for field in self._meta.fields:
            if field.unique and getattr(self, field.name):
                current_value = getattr(self, field.name)
                setattr(
                    self,
                    field.name,
                    f"{current_value}__deleted_{self.deleted_at.timestamp()}",
                )
        self.save()

    def restore(self):
        for field in self._meta.fields:
            if field.unique and getattr(self, field.name):
                current_value = getattr(self, field.name)
                if "__deleted_" in current_value:
                    original_value = current_value.split("__deleted_")[0]
                    exists_query = Q(**{field.name: original_value})
                    if self.__class__.objects.filter(exists_query).exists():
                        raise IntegrityError(
                            f"Cannot restore record - {field.name} with value '{original_value}' already exists"
                        )

                    setattr(self, field.name, original_value)

        self.deleted_at = None
        self.save()

Step 3: We will create a model that uses the mixin

class Post(SoftDeletableModel):
    title = models.CharField(max_length=100)
    content = models.TextField()

Now you can use the delete and restore methods on instances of the Post model to soft delete and restore records.

That’s it! You have successfully implemented soft delete in Django. I hope you found this post helpful. If you have any questions or feedback, feel free to dm me on X mail me at gmail.