Soft Delete with JPA and EclipseLink

Assuming I have the following table.

And my entity

@Entity
@Table(name="ITEM")
public class Item {
    private Long itemId;
    private String itemName;
    private Integer itemStatus;

    // getter and setter
}

for AUDITING purpose, hard delete is not encouraged.
thus, when deleting a record, the ITEM_STAUS changes to 2 (deleted).

and I have the following status code
0 - active
1 - inactive
2 - deleted

To achieve this, we need a custom DescriptorCustomizer for the particular entity.
The DescriptorCustomizer will execute update sql on deletion instead of delete sql

public class SoftDeleteCustomizer implements DescriptorCustomizer {

public void customize(ClassDescriptor descriptor) {

    descriptor.getQueryManager()

    .setDeleteSQLString("Update ITEM set ITEM_STATUS = 2 where ITEM_ID = #ITEM_ID"); 

  } 

}

and add the SoftDeleteCustomizer to the Item entity.

@Entity
@Table(name="ITEM")
@Customizer(SoftDeleteCustomizer.class)
public class Item {
    ////

}

Finally, add @AdditionalCriteria to entity

@Entity
@Table(name="ITEM")
@Customizer(SoftDeleteCustomizer.class)
@AdditionalCriteria("this.itemStatus <> 2")
public class Item {
    ////

}

the @AdditionalCriteria annotation will always filter out the items with itemStatus = 2.
meaning all soft-deleted items are ignored, thus users only can see active records from the UI.
whereas, the soft-deleted records are still exist in DB for auditing purpose.


Done!!