How do I 'validate' on destroy in rails

Question

On destruction of a restful resource, I want to guarantee a few things before I allow a destroy operation to continue? Basically, I want the ability to stop the destroy oper

Answer 1

You can wrap the destroy action in an "if" statement in the controller:

def destroy # in controller context
  if (model.valid_destroy?)
    model.destroy # if in model context, use `super`
  end
end

Where valid_destroy? is a method on your model class that returns true if the conditions for destroying a record are met.

Having a method like this will also let you prevent the display of the delete option to the user - which will improve the user experience as the user won't be able to perform an illegal operation.