Soft Deletes: Safely Removing Records

Soft deletes mark records as deleted without removing them from the database.

## Enable soft deletes

Migration:

```php
$table->softDeletes();
```

Model:

```php
use Illuminate\Database\Eloquent\SoftDeletes;

class Post extends Model {
  use SoftDeletes;
}
```

## Use

```php
$post->delete();
Post::withTrashed()->find(1)->restore();
```

## Flow

```mermaid
flowchart LR
  A[delete()] --> B[deleted_at set]
  B --> C[Hidden]
  D[restore()] --> E[Visible again]
```

Soft deletes are useful for recovery and audit safety.

In the next tutorial, we will move validation into form request classes.