I have a database question - say you have an items table and a messages table, and messages can refer to items. If someone needs to delete an item, you can't because of the foreign reference in messages.
I know you could 'soft delete' - set a status column to deleted, but what if you really need to delete, for example because the content is illegal or the user has a legal right to delete it?
@joelanman Do messages need to refer to items, or is it that you just need to get all the items attached to a message?
If not, the item should be foreign keyed to the message ID and the message has no reference to the item. That means items can be deleted but messages cannot unless they CASCADE or you delete all items first.
@jonty I want to have an image of the item and a link to it in the message thread, and I also want to avoid that just disappearing. I think soft delete with replacing the contents might work
@kornel yeh, I'm concerned about the ux though - that the other person would have messages just disappear. I'm leaning to soft delete, and replace contents with 'deleted' or similar
@jonodrew I think it would be poor ux if your messages disappeared because the other person deleted an item... I'm thinking soft delete but replace the content with 'This was deleted' or similar
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