Rails: Good practice to always use ":dependent => :destroy?"

Question

I recently came across an instance when I deleted a User from the database, but the index page for Posts broke because the User that wrote a specific post did not exist anymore.

This made me wonder whether it is good practice to always use :dependent => :destroy? Or is there a not-so-complicated alternative solution to not make the entire page break when the User is deleted? I guess it's more of a business decision, but I think I don't necessarily want to delete all the content when a User removes his account.

I suppose I could use something like

<%= link_to post.author.username unless post.author.blank? ...... %>

but that would make it a very tedious and messy task to have to include that in every line.

Any suggestions/tips on this matter?

Answer 1

Rather then deleting the user deactivate the user, this way you won't break any of the relationships and your data will remain consistent.