In addition to actually removing records from your database, Eloquent can also "soft delete" models. When models are soft deleted, they are not actually removed from your database. Instead, a

deleted_at

attribute is set on the model indicating the date and time at which the model was "deleted". To enable soft deletes for a model, add the

 Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes

trait to the model:

<?php

namespace App\Models;

use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\Model;
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;

class Flight extends Model
{
    use SoftDeletes;
}

You should also add the

deleted_at 

column to your database table. The Laravel

schema builder

contains a helper method to create this column:

use Illuminate\Database\Schema\Blueprint;
use Illuminate\Facades\Schema;

Schema::table('flights', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->softDeletes();
});

Schema::table('flights', function (Blueprint $table) {
    $table->dropSoftDeletes();
});

Now, when you call the

delete

method on the model, the

deleted_at 

column will be set to the current date and time. However, the model's database record will be left in the table. When querying a model that uses soft deletes, the soft deleted models will automatically be excluded from all query results. To determine if a given model instance has been soft deleted, you may use the

trashed

method:

if ($flight->trashed()) {
    //
}

Restoring Soft Deleted Models Sometimes you may wish to "un-delete" a soft deleted model. To restore a soft deleted model, you may call the

restore

method on a model instance. The restore method will set the model's

deleted_at 

column to

null

:

$flight->restore();

You may also use the

restore

method in a query to restore multiple models. Again, like other "mass" operations, this will not dispatch any model events for the models that are restored:

Flight::withTrashed()
        ->where('airline_id', 1)
        ->restore();

The

restore

method may also be used when building relationship queries:

$flight->history()->restore();

Permanently Deleting Models

Sometimes you may need to truly remove a model from your database. You may use the

forceDelete

method to permanently remove a soft deleted model from the database table:

$flight->forceDelete();

You may also use the forceDelete method when building Eloquent relationship queries:

$flight->history()->forceDelete();

Querying Soft Deleted Models As noted above, soft deleted models will automatically be excluded from query results. However, you may force soft deleted models to be included in a query's results by calling the withTrashed method on the query:

use App\Models\Flight;

$flights = Flight::withTrashed()
                ->where('account_id', 1)
                ->get();

The withTrashed method may also be called when building a relationship query:

$flight->history()->withTrashed()->get();

Retrieving Only Soft Deleted Models The

onlyTrashed

method will retrieve only soft deleted models:

$flights = Flight::onlyTrashed()
                ->where('airline_id', 1)
                ->get();