Working With Rails

Administrate Me

= AdministrateMe

(See wiki at http://administrateme.googlecode.com to get more info)

administrate_me is a Rails plugin conceived to simplify the creation of administrative backend interfases on a Rails project. This way you can have basic CRUD with a nice user interfase almost for free.

Install and setup:

If you're already running Rails 2.1 you can just run the next command:

ruby script/plugin install http://github.com/jmax/administrate_me

Otherwise you'll have to clone the git repository and the delete the .git folder:

git clone git://github.com/jmax/administrate_me vendor/plugins/administrate_me
rm vendor/plugins/administrate_me/.git -rf

Once installed you need to run the admin_import_files task to copy to your project the assets files needed by your project:

rake admin:import_files

Dependencies:

administrate_me currently requires at lest Rails 2 to run smoothly.

It will also take advange of other installed plugins on the same project, such as will_paginate and bundle_fu. will_paginate will be used to paginate records of each table and bundle_fu to automatically bundle assets files (javascripts and stylesheets) to increase loading performace.

How to create an app using administrate_me in a few simple steps. == Create a new rails app and then cd into that directory rails new_app cd new_app

==== Install administrate_me, if you’re already on Rails 2.1 you can just run

ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/jmax/administrate_me.git

On previous versions:

git clone git://github.com/jmax/administrate_me.git vendor/plugins/administrate_me
rm /vendor/plugins/administrate_me/.git -rf

On both cases you’ve got to have git installed.

==== Copy asset files to you project, just run this rake task provided by administrate_me.

rake admin:import_files

==== Create a simple model and run the migration

By default this will use a sqlite3 database, otherwise you’ll need to configure your database.yml file.

ruby script/generate model product name:string description:text
rake db:migrate

==== Create an empty controller to admin the created model.

ruby script/generate controller products

Then edit it to to include administrate_me configuration:

class ProductsController < ApplicationController
  administrate_me do |a|
    a.search :name
  end
end

==== Add general configuration for the application

Edit application_controller.rb and add the set_module directive as seen on the next pastie:

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  helper :all # include all helpers, all the time
  protect_from_forgery # :secret => 'ed1896d8d25a5a534d1a14d0f74664f4'
  set_module :products  # This will set a products module or tab on the application interfase
end

==== Add this route on config/routes.rb

map.resources :products

==== Create views for you controller.

Automatically create controller’s views with this rake task. All templates needed will be created using all the table fields, you can edit those files later to include/exclude fields on your demand.

ruby script/generate admin_view products

==== Run the application

Run the server, go to http://localhost:3000/products and enjoy!

How to add parent/children navigation with administrate_me

This build on top of the previously created new_app application, used to manage products. We'll add the posibility for a product to have multiple prices.

== Create a new model and run migrations

In this occasion we’ll create a model named Price

ruby script/generate model price product_id:integer since:date value:decimal
rake db:migrate

==== Add relationships on models

Products should have many prices and prices should belong to products.

class Product < ActiveRecord::Base
  has_many :prices
end

class Price < ActiveRecord::Base
  belongs_to :product
end

==== Create a controller and edit it to include administrate_me configuration

ruby script/generate controller prices

Edit app/contrllers/prices_controller.rb to look like this:

class PricesController < ApplicationController
  administrate_me do |a|
    a.set_parent :product
  end
end

==== Alter products routes on config/routes.rb

Modify the existing product resource to include prices.

map.resources :products, :has_many => :prices

==== Generate controller views

ruby script/generate admin_view prices parent:product

Sometimes we will need to modify the generated partial template app/views/products/_context.html.erb to use the right field name. In this case using the default :name will work. This partial is used to show navigation breadcrumbs on the children page.

==== Modify product page to link to prices

We should now modify the file app/views/products/show.html.erb to provide a link to each product prices. Remove the commented <% content_for :support %> block, and add this:

<% content_for :support do %>    
    <%= related_info_for 'Support tasks', 
          [ 
            { :link => 'Prices', :url => product_prices_path(@resource)}
          ] %>
<% end %>

Now you parent/children navigation is complete!

NOTE: This description has been extracted from the Plugin README and so the formatting may need updating to make browser friendly