Continuing the discussion from Adding model and table with plugin: [image] what happens when someone uninstalls the plugin? Is the idea that when someone uninstalls the plugin the plugins saved data should also be deleted? If that is the idea this is not the wanted behaviour of my particular plugin. With that said, is there any other benefits of using PluginStore that I should take in consideration? I might add that the data that is going to be saved is migrated from another forum which has functionality that Discourse lacks and therefore I am building a plugin for it. This means that it is very important that the data is persisted permanently. /David

PluginStore is never deleted on uninstall, we persist forever.

[image] sam: we persist forever. There should be a way to remove tables / rows if an Admin want to no? My concern is due to experience with WordPress plugins. They can be installed activated deactivated uninstalled The problem comes from the fact that it is up to the plugin author to use the “uninstall hook” to do clean-up and many don’t do that. Some create tables that become unused, and perhaps worse, many add rows to the “options” table. No problem in small doses, but over time the table can become so full of orphans that there is a noticeable slowdown. WordPress being a heavy database app such as it is. I’m not saying that the database should be automatically pruned, but I think it would be good if plugins offered a “pre-uninstall cleanup” type of thing.

PluginStore might not always be preferred

Development

sam (Sam Saffron) March 16, 2016, 7:24am 4

Yeah, it is a known issue, we will eventually get there.

Topic		Replies	Views
Will uninstalling a plugin leave any residual debris files in the database? Self-hosting	5	540	May 15, 2024
Remove plug-in data please! Product Support	4	855	April 16, 2021
Will removing plugins purge their data? Product Support	1	123	July 31, 2025
What happens if you uninstall a plugin that manipulated pages? Product Support	2	1143	September 26, 2018
Plugin Cleaner Plugin	3	281	March 29, 2026

PluginStore might not always be preferred

Related topics