How do I implement cascade delete

Cascade delete is a feature in MySQL that allows the automatic deletion of related records in child tables when a record in a parent table is deleted. This is particularly useful for maintaining data integrity within relational databases. For instance, if you have a parent table of users and a child table of user posts, when a user is removed from the system, all of their associated posts should also be deleted automatically to avoid orphaned records.

To implement cascade delete in MySQL, you can define foreign keys with the ON DELETE CASCADE option. Below is an example of how to do this:

CREATE TABLE users ( id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, name VARCHAR(100) NOT NULL ); CREATE TABLE posts ( id INT AUTO_INCREMENT PRIMARY KEY, user_id INT NOT NULL, content TEXT, FOREIGN KEY (user_id) REFERENCES users(id) ON DELETE CASCADE );

MySQL cascade delete foreign key data integrity relational database database management