How do I find out why I couldn't #destroy() a record?

Question

person = Person.find(4123)
person.destroy #=> false

What ways do I have to find out why the record wasn\'t deleted? The model has two validations, b

Answer 1

I've run into this a few times now, and have finally come across a simple means of identifying the reason the record was not destroyed (tested in Rails 5.x).

Simply wrap the call to destroy! in a rescue block, and look at error.record.errors.

begin
  person = Person.find(4123)
  person.destroy! #=> Note the exclamation mark which will cause an error if it fails
rescue ActiveRecord::RecordNotDestroyed => error
  puts "errors that prevented destruction: #{error.record.errors}"
end