Why soft deleted entities appear in query results?

Question

I am trying to implement soft deleting concept.

Here is my object:

class Post extends Eloquent {

    /**
     * The database table used by the model         


        

Answer 1

There is a little trick using soft delete tables and queries in laravel:

When we create something like

$objCars = Car::where("color","blue");

The system executes something like that:

SELECT
  *
FROM
  cars
WHERE
  deleted_at IS NULL
AND
  "color" = 'blue'

So far, so good. But, when we apply the "orWhere" method, something funny happens

$objCars = Car::where("color","blue")->orWhere("color","red");

The system will execute something like that:

SELECT 
  * 
FROM
  cars
WHERE
  deleted_at IS NULL 
AND 
  "color" = 'blue'
OR
  "color" = 'red'

This new query will return all the car where deleted_at is null and the color is blue OR if the color is red, even if the deleted_at is not null. It is the same behavior of this other query, what show the problem more explicitly:

SELECT 
  * 
FROM
  cars
WHERE
  (
    deleted_at IS NULL 
  AND 
    "color" = 'blue'
  )
OR
  "color" = 'red'

To escape from this problem, you should change the "where" method passing a Closure. Like that:

$objCars = Car::where(
  function ( $query ) {
    $query->where("color","blue");
    $query->orWhere("color","red");
  }
);

Then, the system will execute something like that:

SELECT
  *
FROM
  cars
WHERE
  deleted_at IS NULL
AND
  (
    "color" = 'blue' 
  OR
    "color" = 'red'
  )

This last query, searches for all cars where deleted_at is null and where the color can be or red or blue, as we was want it to do.