Customize The Resource

Rename the Resource

By default, any references to the resource (menu, routes, buttons, etc) in the interface will use the name of the class. You can rename the resource by using the :as option.

ActiveAdmin.register Post, :as => "Article"

The resource will then be available as /admin/articles

Customize the Namespace

By default, resources live in the "admin" namespace.

You can register resources in different namespaces:

# Available at /today/posts
ActiveAdmin.register Post, :namespace => "today"

# Available at /posts
ActiveAdmin.register Post, :namespace => false

The resource will be displayed in the global navigation by default. To disable the resource from being displayed in the global navigation, pass false to the menu method:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  menu false
end

The menu method accepts a hash with the following options:

:label - The string or proc label to display in the menu. If it's a proc, it will be called each time the menu is rendered.
:parent - The string label of the parent to set for this menu
:if - A block or a symbol of a method to call to decide if the menu item should be displayed
:priority - The integer value of the priority. Defaults to 10

Labels

To change the name of the label in the menu:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  menu :label => "My Posts"
end

By default the menu uses a pluralized version of your resource name.

If you wish to translate your label at runtime, store the label as a proc instead of a string. The proc will be called each time the menu is rendered.

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  menu :label => proc{ I18n.t("mypost") }
end

By default Active Admin sorts menus alphabetically. Some times you want specific resources to show up at the beginning or the end of your menu.

Each menu item is given an integer priority value (default 10). You can set it to edit the location of the menu item.

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  menu :priority => 1
end

This would ensure that the Post menu item, is at the beginning of the menu.

Menu items can be shown or hidden at runtime using the :if option.

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  menu :if => proc{ current_admin_user.can_edit_posts? }
end

The proc will be called in the context of the view, so you have access to all your helpers and current user session information.

Drop Down Menus

In many cases, a single level navigation will not be enough for the administration of a production application. In that case, you can categorize your resources and creating drop down menus to access them.

To add the menu as a child of another menu:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  menu :parent => "Blog"
end

Note, the "Blog" menu does not even have to exist yet. It will be generated on the fly as a drop down list for you.

All of the options given to a standard menu item are also available to the parent menu items. You can customize their attributes in the Active Admin initializer.

# config/initializers/active_admin.rb
ActiveAdmin.setup do |config|
  config.namespace :admin do |admin|

    # This block will edit the default menu
    admin.build_menu do |menu|
      menu.add :label => "Blog", :priority => 0
    end

  end
end

Now, if you use menu :parent => "Blog", your resource menu item will be a child of the Blog menu item with the priority of 0.

Sometimes it's not enough to just customize the menu label. In this case, you can customize the menu for the namespace within the Active Admin initializer.

# config/initializers/active_admin.rb
ActiveAdmin.setup do |config|
  config.namespace :admin do |admin|
    admin.build_menu do |menu|
      menu.add :label => "The Application", :url => "/", :priority => 0

      menu.add :label => "Sites" do |sites|
        sites.add :label => "Google", :url => "http://google.com", :html_options => { :target => :blank }
        sites.add :label => "Facebook", :url => "http://facebook.com"
        sites.add :label => "Github", :url => "http://github.com"
      end
    end
  end
end

This block will be run once on application startup to build the menu before each of the resources are added to it.

Scoping the queries

If your administrators have different access levels, you may sometimes want to scope what they have access to. Assuming your User model has the proper has_many relationships, you can simply scope the listings and finders like so:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  scope_to :current_user

  # or if the association doesn't have the default name.
  # scope_to :current_user, :association_method => :blog_posts
end

That approach limits the posts an admin can access to current_user.posts.

If you want to conditionally apply the scope, then there are options for that as well:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  # Only scope the query if there is a user to scope to, helper provided via Devise
  scope_to :current_user, :if => proc{ admin_user_signed_in? }

  # Don't scope the query if the user is an admin
  scope_to :current_user, :unless => proc{ current_admin_user.admin? }

  # Get fancy and can combine with block syntax
  scope_to :if => proc{ admin_user_signed_in? } do
    User.most_popular
  end
end

If you want to do something fancier, for example override a default scope, you can also use :association_method parameter with a normal method on your User model. The only requirement is that your method returns an instance of ActiveRecord::Relation.

class Ad < ActiveRecord::Base
  default_scope lambda { where :published => true }
end

class User < ActiveRecord::Base
  def managed_ads
    # Overrides Ad's default_scope
    Ad.unscoped
  end
end

ActiveAdmin.register Ad do
  scope_to :current_user, :association_method => :managed_ads
end

In case you just need to customize the query independently of the current user, you can override the scoped_collection method on the controller:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  controller do
    def scoped_collection
      Post.includes(:author)
    end
  end
end

Customizing resource retrieval

If you need to completely replace the record retrieving code (e.g., you have a custom to_param implementation in your models), override the resource method on the controller:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  controller do
    def resource
      Post.where(id: params[:id]).first!
    end
  end
end

In fact, the controllers use Inherited Resource, so you can use all the customization features in Inherited Resource.

Belongs To

It's common to want to scope a series of resources to a relationship. For example a Project may have many Milestones and Tickets. To nest the resource within another, you can use the belongs_to method:

ActiveAdmin.register Project do
end

ActiveAdmin.register Ticket do
  belongs_to :project
end

Projects will be available as usual and tickets will be availble by visiting "/admin/projects/1/tickets" assuming that a Project with the id of 1 exists. Active Admin does not add "Tickets" to the global navigation because the routes can only be generated when there is a project id.

To create links to the resource, you can add them to a sidebar (one of the many possibilities for how you may with to handle your user interface):

ActiveAdmin.register Project do

  sidebar "Project Details" do
    ul do
      li link_to("Tickets", admin_project_tickets_path(project))
      li link_to("Milestones", admin_project_milestones_path(project))
    end
  end

end

ActiveAdmin.register Ticket do
  belongs_to :project
end

ActiveAdmin.register Milestone do
  belongs_to :project
end

In some cases (like Projects), there are many sub resources and you would actually like the global navigation to switch when the user navigates "into" a project. To accomplish this, Active Admin stores the belongs_to resources in a seperate menu which you can use if you so wish. To use:

ActiveAdmin.register Ticket do
  belongs_to :project
  navigation_menu :project
end

ActiveAdmin.register Milestone do
  belongs_to :project
  navigation_menu :project
end

Now, when you navigate to the tickets section, the global navigation will only display "Tickets" and "Milestones". When you navigate back to a non-belongs_to resource, it will switch back to the default menu.

You can also defer the menu lookup until runtime so that you can dynamically show different menus, say perhaps on user permissions or level. For example:

ActiveAdmin.register Ticket do
  belongs_to: :project
  navigation_menu do
    authorized?(:manage, SomeResource) ? :project : :restricted_menu
  end
end

Customize The Resource

Rename the Resource

Customize the Namespace

Customize the Menu

Labels

Menu Priority

Conditionally Showing / Hiding Menu Items

Drop Down Menus

Customizing Parent Menu Items

Adding Custom Menu Items

Scoping the queries

Customizing resource retrieval

Belongs To