Rails: how to disable before_destroy callback when it's being destroyed because of the parent is being destroyed (:dependent => :destroy)

Question

I have two classes: Parent and Child with

Child:

belongs_to :parent

and

Parent

has_many :children, :dependent          


        

Answer 1

There's probably a way to accomplish this in a less hacky fashion, but here's an (untested!) idea: add an attr_accessor :destroyed_by_parent to Child and edit Child's before_destroy filter to allow the destroy when it's true.

Add a before_destroy filter to Parent that iterates over all its children:

private

# custom before_destroy
def set_destroyed_by_parent
  self.children.each {|child| child.destroyed_by_parent = true }
end

Provided that the destroy triggered by :dependent => :destroy is executed on the instanced children of the Parent object, it could work. If it instantiates the children separately, it won't work.