Archive your Rails models rather than delete them. This provides the archiving functionality app so you can do the following:

user.archived? #=> false user.archive! #=> true user.archived? #=> true user.unarchive! #=> true user.archived? #=> false

<% if user.archived? %> <%= link_to :Archive, archive_user_path(user) %> <% else %> <%= link_to :Unarchive, archive_user_path(user) %> <% end %>

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'archivable'

And then execute:

$ bundle 

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install archivable 

First, you need to add the archived column to your model (which we we call User for this example):

$ rails g migration add_archived_to_users archived:boolean $ rake db:migrate 

NOTE: remember to edit the migration and set :archived column to default to false in order to simplify querying for non-archived models.

 add_column :users, :archived, :boolean, default: false 

In your routes file (config/routes.rb):

My::Application.routes.draw do resources :users do get archive, on: :member get archived, on: :collection end end

Next, you need to include the model concern to gain access to some handy methods.

class User < ActiveRecord::Base include Archivable::Model # ... end

Lastly, you need to include the controller concern to handle the controller actions.

class UsersController < ApplicationController include Archivable::Controller def index @users = User.where(archived: false) end # ... end

Now, instead of a delete link, you can do the following:

<%= link_to user.archived? ? :Unarchive : :Archive, archive_user_path(user) %> <%= link_to 'See Archived Users', archived_users_path %>

1. Fork it ( http://github.com/johnotander/archivable/fork )
2. Create your feature branch (git checkout -b my-new-feature)
3. Commit your changes (git commit -am 'Add some feature')
4. Push to the branch (git push origin my-new-feature)
5. Create new Pull Request