Soft-delete a row without breaking every query

I need to delete a record but keep it for compliance. Will a naive is_deleted flag come back to bite me later?

IntermediateRead 8 minDoing: an afternoon8 steps

▶ Start

What you'll have at the end

A deleted_at column that hides a row from normal queries while a direct query can still find it and its children

Before you start

You need

A Postgres customers table already live through your migration tool, with email as a plain unique column, and a support_tickets table with a foreign key to it.

Not covered

Cascading a soft delete down to a row's own children automatically; this recipe keeps existing rows and their links intact, never chaining a delete through a whole relationship graph.

Leans on

8 steps

Where to go next

Know when to drop to raw SQL

raw SQL sidesteps the session-level filter this recipe builds, so a report written that way needs its own explicit deleted_at check instead of relying on this one.

Checked 18 Aug 2026

Part of the ORM and Database Abstraction Tools cookbook