Strapi v5 — Soft Delete Plugin

Soft delete plugin for Strapi v5 — never lose content again. When you delete an entry, it's marked as deleted instead of being removed from the database. You can restore it or permanently delete it later.

Drop-in replacement for strapi-plugin-soft-delete with significant improvements.

Features

• Soft delete — delete operations mark entries instead of removing them
• Restore — bring back soft-deleted entries with all relations and components intact
• Permanent delete — remove entries from the database with proper component cleanup
• Soft Delete Explorer — admin panel page to view, restore, and permanently delete entries
• Entry preview — click any entry to see its full content before restoring
• Pagination & filters — date range filtering, paginated results
• RBAC — granular permissions per content type (read, restore, delete permanently)
• Settings — configurable restoration behavior for single types and Draft & Publish
• Auto-purge — automatically delete entries older than N days via cron
• Custom lifecycle hooks — beforeSoftDelete, afterSoftDelete, beforeRestore, afterRestore, beforeDeletePermanently, afterDeletePermanently
• Draft & Publish aware — respects publish state during restore
• Relation safe — soft-deleted entries excluded from populated relations
• Lifecycle safe — soft-delete/restore do NOT trigger beforeUpdate/afterUpdate hooks
• v4 migration — same database columns, automatic settings migration

Compatibility

Installation

npm install strapi-soft-delete-plugin
# or
yarn add strapi-soft-delete-plugin

Add to your plugin configuration:

// config/plugins.ts
export default () => ({
  'soft-delete': {
    enabled: true,
  },
});

Rebuild and start:

npm run build
npm run develop

Configuration

Auto-Purge (optional)

Automatically permanently delete soft-deleted entries older than a specified number of days:

// config/plugins.ts
export default () => ({
  'soft-delete': {
    enabled: true,
    config: {
      autoPurge: {
        enabled: true,
        ttlDays: 30, // permanently delete after 30 days
        cron: '0 2 * * *', // run daily at 2 AM
      },
    },
  },
});

RBAC Permissions

Configure per-role in Settings → Roles → [Role Name]:

Settings

Restoration Behavior

Configure in Settings → Soft Delete → Restoration Behavior:

Single Type Restoration — when restoring a single type entry that already has an active entry:

• Soft Delete — soft-delete the existing active entry (default)
• Delete Permanently — permanently delete the existing active entry

Draft & Publish Restoration — when restoring an entry from a D&P content type:

• Unchanged — preserve the original publish state (default)
• Draft — always restore as draft

Custom Lifecycle Hooks (optional)

The plugin works out of the box without any custom code. If you need to run custom logic during soft-delete operations (e.g., logging, notifications, validation), you can register lifecycle hooks in your application's bootstrap:

// src/index.ts
export default {
  async bootstrap({ strapi }) {
    const hooks = strapi.plugin('soft-delete').service('lifecycle-hooks');

    hooks.register('beforeSoftDelete', async ({ uid, documentId, entries, auth }) => {
      console.log(`About to soft-delete ${documentId} from ${uid}`);
      // Return { cancel: true } to prevent the operation
    });

    hooks.register('afterRestore', async ({ uid, documentId, entries, auth }) => {
      console.log(`Restored ${documentId} in ${uid}`);
    });
  },
};

Available hooks:

• beforeSoftDelete / afterSoftDelete
• beforeRestore / afterRestore
• beforeDeletePermanently / afterDeletePermanently

All before* hooks can return { cancel: true } to abort the operation.

How It Works

1. Schema injection — adds three hidden fields (_softDeletedAt, _softDeletedById, _softDeletedByType) to all api::* content types at boot time
2. Delete interception — Document Service middleware converts delete operations into updates that set the soft-delete fields
3. Query filtering — database lifecycle subscriber injects _softDeletedAt IS NULL into every query, hiding soft-deleted entries from normal API responses and populated relations
4. Admin API — separate endpoints for listing, restoring, and permanently deleting soft-deleted entries
5. Component cleanup — permanent delete properly removes associated components and dynamic zones

Migrating from v4

See MIGRATION.md for a step-by-step guide.

Development

# Install dependencies
npm install

# Build the plugin
npm run build

# Type check (server + admin + tests)
npm run type-check

# Lint
npm run lint

# Format
npm run format

# Unit tests
npm run test

# Unit tests with coverage
npm run test:coverage

# E2E tests (requires running Strapi instance)
npm run test:e2e

License

MIT