Question

I have a vacation approval model that has_many :entries is there a way that if I destroy one of those entries to have the rest destroyed? I also want to send one email if they are, but not one for each entry. Is there a way to observe changes to the collection as a whole?

Answer 1

A callback probably isn’t a good choice because:

class Entry < ActiveRecord::Base
  def after_destroy
    Entry.where(:vacation_id => self.vacation_id).each {|entry| entry.destroy}
  end
end

would produce some bad recursion.

It could be that you should do it in the controller:

class EntriesController < ApplicationController
  def destroy
    @entry = Entry.find(params[:id])
    @entries = Entry.where(:vacation_id => @entry.vacation_id).each {|entry| entry.destroy}
    #send email here
    ...
  end
end