Rails :dependent => destroy, want to call another action instead of destroy

Question

I have a has_many :through model that works perfectly.

  has_many :varietals
  has_many :grapes, :through => :varietals, :dependent => :destroy

I would like to call another action instead of :destroy. In fact, I don't want to nullify the item OR destroy it, I want to update the record status field from 1 to 0 instead of destroy the record.

How to call a custom method instead of destroy ? I suppose I can do that in the model itself... Thanks.

Where to put this method ? In the master model or in the model where the record will be destroyed ?

EDIT:

I'm sorry but I think I didn't enough explain my problem. My problem is not only to so something after the master model is destroyed. I want to custom the destroy action in the Varietal model itself even if the master record is not destroyed.

Something like:

class Varietal < ActiveRecord::Base

    private
      def destroy
        self.update_attributes(:status => 0)
      end
end

Actually this action is not called...

Answer 1

has_many :dependent is limited to only a few options. According to the documentation:

:dependent If set to :destroy all the associated objects are destroyed alongside this object by calling their destroy method. If set to :delete_all all associated objects are deleted without calling their destroy method. If set to :nullify all associated objects’ foreign keys are set to NULL without calling their save callbacks. If set to :restrict this object raises an ActiveRecord::DeleteRestrictionError exception and cannot be deleted if it has any associated objects.

If using with the :through option, the association on the join model must be a belongs_to, and the records which get deleted are the join records, rather than the associated records.

It looks like you would need to alter the destroy method to update the status field.