Paranoia is a re-implementation of acts_as_paranoid for Rails 3, using much, much, much less code.

You would use either plugin / gem if you wished that when you called destroy on an Active Record object that it didn't actually destroy it, but just "hid" the record. Paranoia does this by setting a deleted_at field to the current time when you destroy a record, and hides it by scoping all queries on your model to only include records which do not have a deleted_at field.

In your Gemfile:

gem 'paranoia'

Then run:

bundle install

In your config/environment.rb:

config.gem 'paranoia'

Then run:

rake gems:install

class Client < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_paranoid
  
  ...
end

Hey presto, it's there!

If you want a method to be called on destroy, simply provide a before_destroy callback:

class Client < ActiveRecord::Base
  acts_as_paranoid

  before_destroy :some_method

  def some_method
    # do stuff
  end

  ...
end

This gem is released under the MIT license.