Question

if a User has many articles and these articles belong to a user. Then with a regular scaffold you want to set a time limit until it can no longer be deleted anymore:

def destroy
  @article = Article.find(params[:id])
  @article.destroy

  respond_to do |format|
    format.html { redirect_to articles_url }
    format.json { head :ok }
    format.js
  end
end

How would you permanently disable the delete functionality for the User’s articles?

Answer 1

First of all, you should hide this logic in the model and you should make it available as a public method:

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  def destroyable?
    created_at < some_time.ago
  end
  #...
end

Then in your views you can do things like this:

<% if @model.destroyable? %>
  <!-- delete button/link/... goes here -->
<% end %>

You’ll also want a before_destroy callback in the model that returns false to stop invalid destroys:

class Article < ActiveRecord::Base
  # Your "can destroy" method conveniently returns false at the
  # right time so we can use it here too.
  before_destroy :destroyable?
  #...
end

You could also add an explicit @model.destroyable? check to your destroy controller depending on how you want to handle errors.