redirect_from: /docs/1-general-configuration.html

General Configuration

You can configure Active Admin settings in config/initializers/active_admin.rb. Here are a few common configurations:

Authentication

Active Admin requires two settings to authenticate and use the current user within your application.

the method controllers used to force authentication

config.authentication_method = :authenticate_admin_user!

the method used to access the current user

config.current_user_method = :current_admin_user

Both of these settings can be set to false to turn off authentication.

config.authentication_method = false
config.current_user_method   = false

Site Title Options

Every page has what's called the site title on the left side of the menu bar. If you want, you can customize it.

config.site_title       = "My Admin Site"
config.site_title_link  = "/"
config.site_title_image = "site_image.png"
config.site_title_image = "https://www.google.com/images/logos/google_logo_41.png"
config.site_title_image = ->(context) { context.current_user.company.logo_url }

Internationalization (I18n)

Active Admin comes with translations for a lot of locales. Active Admin does not provide the translations for the kaminari gem it uses for pagination, to get these you can use the kaminari-i18n gem.

To translate Active Admin to a new language or customize an existing translation, you can copy config/locales/en.yml to your application's config/locales folder and update it. We welcome new/updated translations, so feel free to contribute!

When using devise for authentication, you can use the devise-i18n gem to get the devise translations for other locales.

Localize Format For Dates and Times

Active Admin sets :long as default localize format for dates and times. If you want, you can customize it.

config.localize_format = :short

Namespaces

When registering resources in Active Admin, they are loaded into a namespace. The default namespace is "admin".

# app/admin/posts.rb
ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  # ...
end

The Post resource will be loaded into the "admin" namespace and will be available at /admin/posts. Each namespace holds on to its own settings that inherit from the application's configuration.

For example, if you have two namespaces (:admin and :super_admin) and want to have different site title's for each, you can use the config.namespace(name) block within the initializer file to configure them individually.

ActiveAdmin.setup do |config|
  config.site_title = "My Default Site Title"

  config.namespace :admin do |admin|
    admin.site_title = "Admin Site"
  end

  config.namespace :super_admin do |super_admin|
    super_admin.site_title = "Super Admin Site"
  end
end

If you are creating a multi-tenant application you may want to have multiple namespaces mounted to the same path. We can do this using the route_options settings on the namespace

config.namespace :site_1 do |admin|
  admin.route_options = { path: :admin, constraints: ->(request){ request.domain == "site1.com" } }
end

config.namespace :site_2 do |admin|
  admin.route_options = { path: :admin, constraints: ->(request){ request.domain == "site2.com" } }
end

If you would like to mount the namespace to a subdomain instead of path we can use the route_options for this as well

config.namespace :admin do |admin|
  admin.route_options = { path: '', subdomain: 'admin' }
end

Each setting available in the Active Admin setup block is configurable on a per namespace basis.

Load paths

By default Active Admin files go inside app/admin/. You can change this directory in the initializer file:

ActiveAdmin.setup do |config|
  config.load_paths = [File.join(Rails.root, "app", "ui")]
end

Comments

By default Active Admin includes comments on resources. Sometimes, this is undesired. To disable comments:

# For the entire application:
ActiveAdmin.setup do |config|
  config.comments = false
end

# For a namespace:
ActiveAdmin.setup do |config|
  config.namespace :admin do |admin|
    admin.comments = false
  end
end

# For a given resource:
ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  config.comments = false
end

You can change the name under which comments are registered:

config.comments_registration_name = 'AdminComment'

You can change the order for the comments and you can change the column to be used for ordering:

config.comments_order = 'created_at ASC'

You can disable the menu item for the comments index page:

config.comments_menu = false

You can customize the comment menu:

config.comments_menu = { parent: 'Admin', priority: 1 }

Remember to indicate where to place the comments and form with:

active_admin_comments

The "utility navigation" shown at the top right normally shows the current user and a link to log out. However, the utility navigation is just like any other menu in the system; you can provide your own menu to be rendered in its place.

ActiveAdmin.setup do |config|
  config.namespace :admin do |admin|
    admin.build_menu :utility_navigation do |menu|
      menu.add label: "ActiveAdmin.info", url: "https://www.activeadmin.info",
                                          html_options: { target: :blank }
      admin.add_current_user_to_menu  menu
      admin.add_logout_button_to_menu menu
    end
  end
end

By default, Active Admin displays a "Powered by ActiveAdmin" message on every page. You can override this message and show domain-specific messaging:

config.footer = "MyApp Revision v1.3"