What are some alternative methods to deleting data from a database in PHP to ensure data integrity and availability for future use?

When deleting data from a database in PHP, instead of permanently removing the data, you can consider implementing a "soft delete" approach. This involves adding a column to your database table to mark the record as deleted without actually removing it. This allows you to maintain data integrity and availability for future use while still being able to exclude deleted records from queries. 

// Soft delete a record by updating a 'deleted_at' column
$deleted_at = date('Y-m-d H:i:s');
$sql = "UPDATE your_table SET deleted_at = :deleted_at WHERE id = :id";
$stmt = $pdo->prepare($sql);
$stmt->execute(['deleted_at' => $deleted_at, 'id' => $id]);

Keywords

SQL transactions PDO prepared statements foreign key constraints data backup.

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