Automatically deleting related rows in Laravel (Eloquent ORM)

When I delete a row using this syntax:

$user->delete();

Is there a way to attach a callback of sorts, so that it would e.g. do this automatically:

$this->photo()->delete();

Preferably inside the model-class.

Solution 1:

I believe this is a perfect use-case for Eloquent events (http://laravel.com/docs/eloquent#model-events). You can use the "deleting" event to do the cleanup:

class User extends Eloquent
{
    public function photos()
    {
        return $this->has_many('Photo');
    }

    // this is a recommended way to declare event handlers
    public static function boot() {
        parent::boot();

        static::deleting(function($user) { // before delete() method call this
             $user->photos()->delete();
             // do the rest of the cleanup...
        });
    }
}

You should probably also put the whole thing inside a transaction, to ensure the referential integrity..

Solution 2:

You can actually set this up in your migrations:

$table->foreign('user_id')->references('id')->on('users')->onDelete('cascade');

Source: http://laravel.com/docs/5.1/migrations#foreign-key-constraints

You may also specify the desired action for the "on delete" and "on update" properties of the constraint:

$table->foreign('user_id')
      ->references('id')->on('users')
      ->onDelete('cascade');