Check all associations before destroy in rails

Question

I have an important model in my application, with many associations. If I want to check all the references in a before_destroy callback, i\'d have to do something like:

Answer 1

You can pass the :dependent => :restrict option to your has_many calls:

has_many :models, :dependent => :restrict

This way, you will only be able to destroy the object if no other associated objects reference it.

Other options are:

• :destroy - destroys every associated object calling their destroy method.
• :delete_all - deletes every associated object without calling their destroy method.
• :nullify - sets the foreign keys of the associated objects to NULL without calling their save callbacks.