What is ActiveAdmin?

ActiveAdmin is a Ruby on Rails framework that simplifies the creation of elegant backends for your applications. It comes with a powerful DSL (Domain Specific Language) that allows you to scaffold and modify your Rails backend quickly. This feature is incredibly useful for support teams, enabling them to manage data independently without needing constant developer intervention.

Setting Up ActiveAdmin

First, update your Gemfile to include the necessary gems for integrating ActiveAdmin with Rails 7. We will use the master branch of ActiveAdmin from GitHub due to upcoming changes, but you can revert to a stable version once it's released.

# ActiveAdmin setup
gem 'activeadmin', github: 'activeadmin/activeadmin', branch: 'master' # FIXME: revert to stable

# Required for ActiveAdmin
gem 'sass-rails'

# Additional integrations
gem 'devise'
gem 'cancancan'
gem 'draper'
gem 'pundit'

Installing the Gems:

bundle install

Generating ActiveAdmin Files

Next, generate the necessary ActiveAdmin files and configurations:
 

rails generate active_admin:install

This command will create several files and directories, including an admin user model for authentication and an initializer for ActiveAdmin settings. 

Running Migrations

Apply the changes to your database by running:

rails db:migrate

 Starting the Rails Server

Start your Rails server to access the ActiveAdmin interface:

rails server

 Accessing the Admin Interface

Open your web browser and navigate to /admin. You should see the ActiveAdmin login page. Use the default admin credentials set up during installation to log in.

Creating and Managing a Custom Model: Flag

Let’s create a custom model named Flag and manage it within ActiveAdmin. First, generate the model:

rails generate model Flag name:string status:boolean

 Next, let's update the seeds to add some example flags for us to muck around with:

AdminUser.create!(email: '[email protected]', password: 'password', password_confirmation: 'password') if Rails.env.development?

Flag.create!([
    {
        "name": "feature_a",
        "is_active": true
    },
    {
        "name": "feature_b",
        "is_active": true
    },
    {
        "name": "feature_c",
        "is_active": true
    }
])

rails db:reset
rails db:migrate db:seed

 bin/rails generate active_admin:resource Flag

 This will output a new resource file in:app/admin/flag.rb.
 In order to be able to interact and update values, we need to uncomment what an admin is allowed to interact with in the admin panel:

ActiveAdmin.register Flag do
  # See permitted parameters documentation:
  # https://github.com/activeadmin/activeadmin/blob/master/docs/2-resource-customization.md#setting-up-strong-parameters
  #
  # Uncomment all parameters which should be permitted for assignment
  #
  permit_params :name, :is_active
  #
  # or
  #
  # permit_params do
  #   permitted = [:name, :is_active]
  #   permitted << :other if params[:action] == 'create' && current_user.admin?
  #   permitted
  # end
end

Using the Dashboard

With the server running, navigate back to /admin. You should now see a section for managing Flags. Here, you can add new Flags, edit existing ones, and filter them based on their attributes.

Conclusion

ActiveAdmin significantly streamlines the process of building internal dashboards for Rails applications. By following this guide, you can quickly set up ActiveAdmin with Rails 7 and manage a custom model, enhancing the efficiency of your development workflow and empowering your support teams.

swaz_ahmed

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