before_destroy callback not stopping record from being deleted

Question

I am trying to prevent a record from being destroyed if there are children.

class Submission < ActiveRecord::Base  has_many :quotations, :dependent => :destroy   before_destroy :check_for_payments     def quoted?     quotations.any?   end     def has_payments?    true if quotations.detect {|q| q.payment}   end     private    def check_for_payments     if quoted? && has_payments?       errors[:base] << "cannot delete submission that has already been paid"       false     end   end  end  class Quotation < ActiveRecord::Base      #associations     belongs_to :submission         has_one :payment_notification            has_one :payment           before_destroy :check_for_payments  private   def check_for_payments   if payment_notification || payment     errors[:base] << "cannot delete quotation while payment exist"     return false   end end end 

When I test this code the before_destroy :check_for_payments prevents the Quotation record from being deleted.

However the :check_for_payments in the Submission before_destroy callback does not stop the Submission from being deleted.

How can I stop the Submission with payments from being destroyed?

Answer 1

In Rails 5 you have to throw :abort otherwise it won't work. (even returning false)

Also, you should add prepend: true to the callback, to make sure it runs before the dependent: :destroy on the parent models.

Something like this should work:

class Something < ApplicationRecord    before_destroy :can_destroy?, prepend: true    private    def can_destroy?     if model.something?       self.errors.add(:base, "Can't be destroy because of something")       throw :abort     end   end end