ArchivalRecord

Atomically archive object trees in your ActiveRecord models.

acts_as_paranoid and similar plugins/gems work on a record-by-record basis and made it difficult to restore records atomically (or archive them, for that matter).

Because the #archive! and #unarchive! methods are in transactions, and every archival record involved gets the same archive number upon archiving, you can easily restore or remove an entire set of records without having to worry about partial deletion or restoration.

Additionally, other plugins generally change how destroy/delete work. ArchivalRecord does not, and thus one can destroy records like normal.

Maintenance

You might read the commit logs and think "This must be abandonware! This hasn't been updated in 2y!" But! This is a mature project that solves a specific problem in ActiveRecord. It tends to only be updated when a new major version of ActiveRecord comes out and hence the infrequent updates.

Install

Gemfile:

gem "archival_record"

Any models you want to be archival should have the columns archive_number (String) and archived_at (DateTime).

i.e. rails g migration AddArchivalRecordToPost archive_number archived_at:datetime

Any dependent-destroy ArchivalRecord model associated to an ArchivalRecord model will be archived with its parent.

If you're stuck on Rails 4.0x/3x/2x, check out the older tags/branches, which are no longer in active development.

Example

class Hole < ActiveRecord::Base
  archival_record
  has_many :rats, dependent: :destroy
end

class Rat < ActiveRecord::Base
  archival_record
end

Simple interactions & scopes

h = Hole.create                  #
h.archived?                      # => false
h.archive!                       # => true
h.archived?                      # => true
h.archive_number                 # => "b56876de48a5dcfe71b2c13eec15e4a2"
h.archived_at                    # => Thu, 01 Jan 2012 01:49:21 -0400
h.unarchive!                     # => true
h.archived?                      # => false
h.archive_number                 # => nil
h.archived_at                    # => nil

Associations

h = Hole.create                  #
r = h.rats.create                #
h.archive!                       # => true
h.archive_number                 # => "b56876de48a5dcfe71b2c13eec15e4a2"
r.archived_at                    # => Thu, 01 Jan 2012 01:52:12 -0400
r.archived?                      # => true
h.unarchive!                     # => true
h.archive_number                 # => nil
r.archived_at                    # => nil
r.archived?                      # => false

Relations

Hole.create!
Hole.create!
Hole.create!

holes = Hole.all

# All records in the relation will be archived with the same archive_number.
# Dependent/Destroy relationships will be archived, and callbacks will still be honored.
holes.archive_all!              # => [array of Hole records in the relation]

holes.first.archive_number      # => "b56876de48a5dcfe71b2c13eec15e4a2"
holes.last.archive_number       # => "b56876de48a5dcfe71b2c13eec15e4a2"

holes.unarchive_all!            # => [array of Hole records in the relation]

Scopes

h = Hole.create
Hole.archived.size               # => 0
Hole.unarchived.size             # => 1
h.archive!
Hole.archived.size               # => 1
Hole.unarchived.size             # => 0

Utility methods

h = Hole.create                  #
h.archival?                   # => true
Hole.archival?                # => true

Options

When defining an ArchivalRecord model, it is is possible to make it unmodifiable when it is archived by passing readonly_when_archived: true to the archival_record call in your model.

class CantTouchThis < ActiveRecord::Base
  archival_record readonly_when_archived: true
end

record = CantTouchThis.create(foo: "bar")
record.archive!                              # => true
record.foo = "I want this to work"
record.save                                  # => false
record.errors.full_messages.first            # => "Cannot modify an archived record."

Callbacks

ArchivalRecord models have four additional callbacks to do any necessary cleanup or other processing before and after archiving and unarchiving, and can additionally halt the archive callback chain.

class Hole < ActiveRecord::Base
  archival_record

  # runs before #archive!
  before_archive :some_method_before_archiving

  # runs after #archive!
  after_archive :some_method_after_archiving

  # runs before #unarchive!
  before_unarchive :some_method_before_unarchiving

  # runs after #unarchive!
  after_unarchive :some_method_after_unarchiving

  # ... implement those methods
end

Halting the callback chain

Rails 4.2 - the callback method should return a false/nil value.
Rails 5.x - the callback should throw(:abort)/raise(:abort).

Caveats

This will only work on associations that are dependent destroy. It should be trival to change that or make it optional.
If you would like to work on this, you will need to setup sqlite on your development machine. Alternately, you can disable specific dev dependencies in the gemspec and test_helper and ask for help.

Testing

Running the tests should be as easy as:

script/setup                 # bundles, makes databases with permissions
rake                         # run tests on latest Rails
appraisal rake               # run tests on all versions of Rails

Check out more on appraisal if you need to add new versions of things or run into a version bug.

Help Wanted

We'd love to have your help making this better! If you have ideas for features this should implement or you think the code sucks, let us know. And PRs are greatly appreciated. :+1:

Thanks

ActsAsParanoid and PermanentRecords were both inspirations for this:

Contributors

Joel Meador
Michael Kuehl
Matthew Gordon
Vojtech Salbaba
David Jones
Dave Woodward
Miles Sterrett
James Hill
Maarten Claes
Anthony Panozzo
Aaron Milam
Anton Rieder
Josh Menden
Sergey Gnuskov
Elijah Miller

Thanks!

MIT-Licensed