Soft Deleting through relationships - laravel

Question

I am trying to understand something.
I have a Project Model.
A Project can have many Document.
A Document has many DocumentData.
So this is straight forward, I have my models set up like so
class Project extends Model
{
protected $table = 'projects';
protected $guarded = [];
use SoftDeletes;
public function document()
{
return $this->hasMany('App\document', 'projectId');
}
public static function boot()
{
parent::boot();
static::deleted(function($document)
{
$document->delete();
});
}
}
class Document extends Model
{
use SoftDeletes;
protected $table = 'document';
protected $guarded = [];
public function project()
{
return $this->belongsTo('App\Project', 'projectId');
}
public function documentData()
{
return $this->hasMany('App\DocumentData', 'documentId');
}
public static function boot()
{
parent::boot();
static::deleted(function($document)
{
$document->documentData()->delete();
});
}
}
class DocumentData extends Model
{
use SoftDeletes;
protected $table = 'document_data';
protected $guarded = [];
public function document()
{
return $this->belongsTo('App\Document', 'documentId');
}
}
I am trying to understand the boot function and whether I have set it up properly? When I delete a project, its deleted_at timestamp is set. I am also looking for it to set the deleted at timestamp for all of that Projects Documents and DocumentData.
At the moment, when I delete a Project, on its deleted_at timestamp is set. The Document and DocumentData remains null.
How can I get it soft deleting through all related models?
Thanks

Answer 1

You're using the boot method correctly. The only thing i notice is a mistake in the handler of your Project's deleted event. You're trying to delete the instance again after it's been deleted. Instead, i suppose, you want to delete the associated Documents like so:
public static function boot()
{
parent::boot();
static::deleted(function($project)
{
$project->document()->delete();
});
}
Alternative Method:
The way i usually delete children is to override the delete() method on the parent models. I prefer the resulting code that way, but that's just a personal preference.
In your case that would be:
class Project extends Model {
public function delete()
{
parent::delete(); // first delete the Project instance itself
$this->document()->delete(); // delete children
}
}
class Document extends Model {
public function delete()
{
parent::delete();
$this->documentData()->delete();
}
}