Question

I am using ActsAsParanoid for soft deleting users.After deleting(soft) a user, my client wants to create user with same email id.But it generating unique field error since email column is unique.So my question is can we set the uniqueness for email column only if the deleted_at column is null.

Pls reply if u dont understand my question.

Answer 1

I suppose you could change the uniqueness constraint of your users table to be:

UNIQUE (email, deletion_date)

This would effectively:

• For standard (non-deleted) users, guarantee they have unique email addresses, since their deletion dates would presumably all be NULL.
• For deleted users, not make any guarantee about email addresses, since they all have unique deletion dates.
• For new users, allow them to use an email address that a deleted user has, since the new user will have a NULL deletion date, while the deleted user has a value there.