What are the best practices for handling IDs of deleted data records in PHP?

When handling IDs of deleted data records in PHP, it is important to ensure that the application does not attempt to access or manipulate data associated with a deleted record. One common approach is to implement soft deletion, where a flag is set on the record instead of physically deleting it. This way, the record can be marked as inactive but still referenced by its ID. 

// Example of soft deletion in PHP
// Assuming $id is the ID of the record to be "deleted"

// Update the record's status to mark it as deleted
$query = "UPDATE table_name SET status = 'deleted' WHERE id = $id";
$result = mysqli_query($connection, $query);

if($result){
    echo "Record marked as deleted successfully";
} else {
    echo "Error marking record as deleted";
}

Keywords

SQL injection soft delete foreign key constraints PHP PDO data integrity

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