admin_data

Introduction

This is a plugin to manage your database records using browser.

Live Demo

http://www.neeraj.name/admin_data

Note that in the demo you will be accessing only 'read only' features. You will not be able to update/delete/create any record.

Totally Non Intrusive

No change is required anywhere in your application.
All the features are provided without creating any new named_scope. No lingering named_scope in your app.
Nothing is stored in session or in cookies.

Features

Browse table records.
For each individual record a snapshot of all association records is shown. Associations that are supported are has_many, belongs_to and has_one. If an associated record is not present then there will be no link.
Supports name spaced models like Vehicle::Car and Vehicle::Engine.
Next to association a count of number of associated records is shown.
Al the associated records are links so one can navigate from record to record.
Quick search across all records in a table. Quick searches across all records and all columns which are either 'string' type or 'text' type.
Advance search for each field of each of the tables. click here to see the options that are supported. Different options appear for diffent data types.
Sort the result on any column in ascending or descending order for both quick and advance search.
Browse migration records from schema_migrations table even though there is no corresponding model for this table.
Configure number of records to be shown in the list. Default value is 50.
For both viewing the page and updating a record, security check is enforced. More on this in next section.
Add a new record (update security check enforced)
Edit an existing record (update security check enforced)
Delete an existing record (update security check enforced and no callbacks)
Destroy an existing record (update security check enforced and callbacks will be invoked)
Diagnostic test lists all the columns which are foreign keys but index is not defined on them.
Plugin does not assume that all the tables have primary key as 'id'. It respects the primary_key set in the model.

Requirements

Rails project must be using Rails 2.2 or higher.
will_paginate gem.

Installation instruction if you are using Rails 2.3

   
ruby script/plugin install git://github.com/neerajdotname/admin_data.git

that's it. Now visit http://localhost:3000/admin_data

Installation instruction if you are using Rails 2.2

If you are using Rails 2.2 then you need to checkout older version of this plugin like this

	
	git clone git://github.com/neerajdotname/admin_data.git
   	cd admin_data
   	git co -b for_rails_2.2 origin/for_rails_2.2
   	cd ..
   	cp -rv admin_data my_app/vendor/plugins

After the plugin has been copied to your vendor/plugins directory then you need to make certain changes to the config/routes.rb .

After installing the plugin you need to put following lines of code in config/routes.rb at the very top

AdminData::Routing.connect_with map.

After the lines have been added it might look like this

	ActionController::Routing::Routes.draw do |map|
	  AdminData::Routing.connect_with map
	  # ... more routing information
	end

How to use it

http://localhost:3000/admin_data

Security check

This plugin allows you to configure security check for both view and update access. Default security check is to allow both view and update access in development mode and restrict both view and update access in any other environment. Given below is the default security.

AdminDataConfig.set = {
  :will_paginate_per_page => 50,
  :view_security_check => lambda {|controller| return true if Rails.env.development? },
  :update_security_check => lambda {|controller| return true if Rails.env.development? }
}

Given below is one way to ensure authentication in other environments. Put the following lines of code in an initializer at ~/config/initializers/admin_data_setting.rb .

AdminDataConfig.set = {
  :view_security_check => lambda {|controller| controller.send('logged_in?') },
  :update_security_check => lambda {|controller| controller.send('admin_logged_in?') }
}

Tested with

I have tested this plugin with MySQL and PostgreSQL.

Run all the tests by going to the plugin directory and executing rake . There are over 100 tests and all of them should pass.

Feedback and bug report

Email me: neerajdotname [at] gmail (dot) com

Report any bug at http://github.com/neerajdotname/admin_data/issues

Author Blog

www.neeraj.name

source code

http://github.com/neerajdotname/admin_data

Contributors

License

MIT

Tips and Tricks

How do I handle to_param case

I have a model called City which is defined like this.

class City < ActiveRecord::Base
  def to_param
    self.permanent_name
  end
end

This plugin will generate show method for city like this /admin_data/city/miami . The controller will execute the query assuming that id is 'miami' and the record will not be found.

We propose two ways of handling such cases.

Solution 1: override City klass methods

In this case two methods of the klass are overriden. Note that this is how rails scaffold generates code and this is the recommended way.

class City < ActiveRecord::Base
  
  def to_param
    self.permanent_name
  end
  
  private

  def City.find_one(id, options)
    return super if id.is_a? Numeric
    find_by_permanent_name(id)
  end

  def City.find_some(ids, options)
    return super if ids.all? {|id| id.is_a? Numeric }
    find_all_by_permanent_name(ids)
  end

end

Solution 2: pass additional option to AdminDataConfig

In this case user can pass additional option called find_conditions to AdminDataConfig. This option will tell the plugin how to build the select condition for that klass.

AdminDataConfig.set = {
  :view_security_check => lambda {|controller| controller.send('logged_in?') },
  :update_security_check => lambda {|controller| controller.send('admin_logged_in?') }
  :find_conditions => Proc.new do |params| 
    { City.name.underscore => {:conditions => { :permanent_name => params[:id]}}}
  end
}

How to run tests for this plugin

Just execute the following command. That's it.

rake

lance/admin_data