Question

I’ve two models: Event and Link.

• Event has_many :links
• Link belongs_to :event

I would like to delete all the related links when the events_controller.rb#destroy action is invoked.

This is the destroy action:

def destroy
  @event = Event.find(params[:id])
  @event.destroy

  links = @event.links

  for link in links do
    link.destroy
  end

  respond_to do |format|
    format.html { redirect_to :back }
    format.json { head :no_content }
  end
end

But it doesn’t seem to be working. Where am I going wrong?

Answer 1

Stop right there, you don’t have to reinvent this wheel. Rails does this for you.

In your models, simply specify

class Event
  has_many :links, :dependent => :destroy
end

And when you delete an Event, all its links will be automatically destroyed.

From the Rails Guide on Deleting From Associations:

Dependent associations

has_many, has_one and belongs_to associations support the :dependent option. This allows you to specify that associated records should be deleted when the owner is deleted.