Spring Data Rest – Soft Delete

I’ve been using spring data rest without any problem but now I have a requirement that when a user performs a DELETE operation on a given entity i.e. DELETE /accounts/<id> I need to set a flag on the database marking that entity as deleted but i do want to keep the record.

Basically this means that I need to do an UPDATE instead of a DELETE operation in the database. I don’t find any way to override the spring behavior for the delete(ID) method.

Some code:

@Entity
@Table(name = "account")
public class Account {

    /*
Default value for this field is false but when a receive a 
DELETE request for this entity i want to turn this flag 
to false instead of deleting the record.
    */
    @Column(name = "deleted")
    private boolean deleted;

...
}

Account Repository

@RepositoryRestResource
public interface AccountRepository extends JpaRepository<Account, Integer> {

}

Any ideas?

Answer

Try to create a custom repository, to see how it would play out

http://docs.spring.io/spring-data/jpa/docs/1.9.0.RELEASE/reference/html/#repositories.custom-implementations

But delete is not the only place you’ll need to change your logic. I see 2 ways to handle the flag requirement:

1. Have an extra flag in your entity definition, and update it on Delete.

   In this case you need to be careful, and rewrite all existing queries, to be sure, that removed entities would not be returned, and keep in mind this separation of results, for all future entities. (Although you can hack SpringData on low level, and append this flag automatically).

2. Delete entity from original collection and add it to another collection, where entities are stored before complete disposal.

   In this case you’ll need to have additional logic for managing disposal collections, but this has no implications on query logic. You can integrate with your existing application, by adding entity listener to your JPA definition (http://docs.spring.io/spring-data/jpa/docs/1.9.0.RELEASE/reference/html/#jpa.auditing)