Mongoosejs Soft Delete Plugin

A lightweight plugin that enables the soft delete functionality for documents in MongoDB. This code is based on mongoose-delete.

Usage Guidelines

How it Works

Functions performing with Mongoose

Functions Support

Handling Hooks

removeMany and removeOne hooks

Installation

Install using npm

npm install mongoosejs-soft-delete

Usage

You can use this plugin with or without passing the options to the plugin.

Basic Usage

let softDelete = require('mongoosejs-soft-delete');
let SampleSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
    comment: String
})
SampleSchema.plugin(softDelete) //Without passing any parameters.

let Sample = mongoose.model('Sample', SampleSchema);
let document = new Sample({
    comment: "This plugin is awesome."
});
   
let sampleId = mongoose.Types.ObjectId("507f1f77bcf86cd799439011");

//This will do soft delete for one document.
Sample.removeOne({ _id: sampleId }, function (err, res) {});
Sample.findByIdDeleted(sampleId, function(err, doc) {
    //doc.deletedAt will be current timestamp
    //doc.deleted will be true
})

//This will do soft delete for multiple document.
Sample.removeMany({ _id: sampleId }, function (err, res) {});

// If you want to perform hard delete.
//For deleting one document.
Sample.deleteOne({ _id: sampleId }, callback);

//For deleting multiple documents.
Sample.deleteMany(conditions, callback);

By default, basic usage will set the deleted and deletedAt field. The type of deleted field will be Boolean whereas deletedAt will have the current timestamp.

Advance Usage

If you want to change the default behaviour of the plugin. For example, instead of deletedAt you want to have custom field and the value of that custom field should be a custom function then you can use this second option.

let softDelete = require('mongoosejs-soft-delete');
let SampleSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
    comment: String
})

//To define our on custom field pass two params: index and define that index.

function getCustom() {
    return true;
}

SampleSchema.plugin(softDelete, { index: 'custom', custom: getCustom()) 

let Sample = mongoose.model('Sample', SampleSchema);
let document = new Sample({
    comment: "This plugin is awesome."
});
   
let sampleId = mongoose.Types.ObjectId("507f1f77bcf86cd799439011");

//This will do soft delete for one document.
Sample.removeOne({ _id: sampleId }, function (err, res) {});
Sample.findByIdDeleted(sampleId, function(err, doc) {
    //doc.custom will be true
    //doc.deleted will be true
})

//This will do soft delete for multiple document.
Sample.removeMany({ _id: sampleId }, function (err, res) {});

// If you want to perform hard delete.
//For deleting one document.
Sample.deleteOne({ _id: sampleId }, callback);

//For deleting multiple documents.
Sample.deleteMany(conditions, callback);

If you are passing your own custom function make sure it has some return type. Any return type except the function.

Also you can directly assign certain value the index field value.

    SampleSchema.plugin(softDelete, { index: 'custom', custom: true });

How it works

We haven't override the mongoose deleteOne and deleteMany function so it will perform hard delete (not soft delete).

Below table shows the functions that will do soft delete.

Mongoose Function	Under Hood Performs
findById	findOne
findOneAndRemove	findOneAndUpdate
findOneAndDelete	findOneAndUpdate
findByIdAndRemove	findByIdAndUpdate
findByIdAndDelete	findByIdAndUpdate
removeOne	updateOne
removeMany	updateMany

Functions Support

For the following method we have methods to query the non-soft-deleted documents, soft deleted (suffix: Deleted) document and both of the documents(suffix: withDeleted).

Non-Deleted Documents	Soft Deleted Documents	All Documents
find	findDeleted	findWithDeleted
findByIdAndUpdate	findByIdAndUpdateDeleted	findByIdAndWithUpdateDeleted
findOne	findOneDeleted	findOneWithDeleted
findOneAndUpdate	findOneAndUpdateDeleted	findOneAndUpdateWithDeleted
replaceOne	replaceOneDeleted	replaceOneWithDeleted
updateMany	updateManyDeleted	updateManyWithDeleted
updateOne	updateOneDeleted	updateOneWithDeleted

Hard and soft delete functions

The following method performs delete feature.

Function	Type
deleteOne	Hard Delete
deleteMany	Hard Delete
removeOne	Soft Delete
removeMany	Soft Delete

Hooks

Using mongoose hooks for soft delete. There is always a case like you want to remove the related documents on soft delete then you can always use the below hook.

Note: This hook is only useful if you call removeOne and removeMany and always passing the required constraint for fetching relational data

   let softDelete = require('mongoosejs-soft-delete');
   let SampleSchema = new mongoose.Schema({
       comment: String
   })
   
   SampleSchema.plugin(softDelete);
   
   //This hook will run if you use Model.removeOne() method.
   SampleSchema.post('updateOne', async function() {
        if (this._update.deleted) {
            //this doc is deleted so you can easily perform clean up here.
        }
   });
   
   
   //This hook will run if you use Model.removeMany() method.
   SampleSchema.post('updateMany', async function() {
        if (this._update.deleted) {
            //do your clean up work.
        }
   });

Also, you can use the _conditions to the query parameters that you passed while calling the removeMany or removeOne method.