In Elixir soft delete records immediately followed by a real delete a day later. (untested example)

soft-delete.ex

defmodule User do

  def all do
    from(u in UserSchema, where: is_nil(u.deleted_at)) |> Repo.all
  end
  
  def delete(user_id) do
    user = Repo.get!(UserSchema, user_id)
    changeset = Ecto.Changeset.change(user, deleted_at: Ecto.DateTime.utc)
    Repo.update(changeset)
  end
  
end



defmodule Garbage do
  use GenServer
  
  def start_link() do
    GenServer.start_link(__MODULE__, [], name: __MODULE__)
  end

  def init(_) do
    Process.send_after(self, :user_clean, 1000 * 60 * 60 * 24)
    {:ok, []}
  end
  
  def handle_info(:user_clean, state) do
    day_ago = Timex.shift(DateTime.utc_now, days: -1)
    from(u in UserSchema, where: not(is_nil(u.deleted_at)) and u.deleted_at < day_ago) |> Repo.delete_all
    {:noreply, state}
  end
end


// start the garbage collector in the application
children = [
  worker(MyApp.Garbage, []),
]