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 Menu

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 label to display in the menu
  • :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.

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.

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.

Conditionally Showing / Hiding Menu Items

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.

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 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