Route Model Binding and Soft Deletes - Laravel 4

Question

When using soft deletes and route to model binding their arises a circumstance when you cannot view the injected model if it has been "soft deleted".

e.g.

I have a Job model. if i "trash" one of these models and then open the trash and try to view the Job model i get a 404 resource not found. I resolved this by using the Route::bind() function as such

Route::bind('job', function($id, $route) {

    return Job::withTrashed()->find($id);
});

although this seems unnecessary and a little silly... is there a way around this so i can use the very eloquent one line binding:

Route::model('job', 'Job');

Answer 1

What you've outlined in your question seems to solve it.

A slight refinement is that you may want to specify which specific key to include the trashed models.

E.g. have normal route model bind like so:

Route::model('job', 'Job');

And define another key like 'anyjob' where you allow trashed jobs to be queried also:

Route::bind('anyjob', function($id) {    
    return Job::withTrashed()->find($id);
});

Then for routes where you don't want to include trashed jobs you just reference job:

get('/jobs/{job}/edit', ['controller' => 'JobsController@edit']); // We don't want to be able to edit a trashed job.

And only reference the anyjob binding for routes where a trashed job is acceptable:

delete('/jobs/{anyjob}', ['controller' => 'JobsController@destroy']); // we could then forceDelete the trashed job for example as it'll be correctly injected in out our controller method

This prevents you ending up with soft-deleted models in controller methods that should otherwise not deal with them. You specify the exact routes which could accept any job, or even just trashed jobs.