Customizing the Index Page

Filtering and listing resources is one of the most important tasks for administering a web application. Active Admin provides many different tools for you to build a compelling interface into your data for the admin staff.

Built in, Active Admin has the following index renderers:

• Table: A table drawn with each row being a resource (View Table Docs)
• Grid: A set of rows and columns each cell being a resource (View Grid Docs)
• Blocks: A set of rows (not tabular) each row being a resource (View Blocks Docs)
• Blog: A title and body content, similar to a blog index (View Blog Docs)

All index pages also support scopes, filters, pagination, action items, and sidebar sections.

Multiple Index Pages

Sometime you may want more than one index page for a resource to represent different views to the user. If multiple index pages exist, Active Admin will automatically build links at the top of the default index page. Including multiple views is simple and requires creating multiple index components in your resource.

index do
  column :image_title
  default_actions
end

index :as => :grid do |product|
  link_to(image_tag(product.image_path), admin_product_path(product))
end

The first index component will be the default index page unless you indicate otherwise by setting :default to true.

index do
  column :image_title
  default_actions
end

index :as => :grid, :default => true do |product|
  link_to(image_tag(product.image_path), admin_product_path(product))
end

Active Admin does not limit the index page to be a table, block, blog or grid. If you've created your own index page it can be included by setting :as to the class of the index component you created.

index :as => ActiveAdmin::Views::IndexAsTable do
  column :image_title
  default_actions
end

Index Filters

By default the index screen includes a "Filters" sidebar on the right hand side with a filter for each attribute of the registered model. You can customize the filters that are displayed as well as the type of widgets they use.

To display a filter for an attribute, use the filter method

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  filter :title
end

Out of the box, Active Admin supports the following filter types:

• :string - A search field
• :date_range - A start and end date field with calendar inputs
• :numeric - A drop down for selecting "Equal To", "Greater Than" or "Less Than" and an input for a value.
• :select - A drop down which filters based on a selected item in a collection or all.
• :check_boxes - A list of check boxes users can turn on and off to filter

By default, Active Admin will pick the most relevant filter based on the attribute type. You can force the type by passing the :as option.

filter :author, :as => :check_boxes

The :check_boxes and :select types accept options for the collection. By default it attempts to create a collection based on an association. But you can pass in the collection as a proc to be called at render time.

# Will call available
filter :author, :as => :check_boxes, :collection => proc { Author.all }

You can change the filter label by passing a label option:

filter :author, :label => 'Author'

By default, Active Admin will try to use ActiveModel I18n to determine the label.

Filters can also be disabled for a resource, a namespace or the entire application.

To disable for a specific resource:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  config.filters = false
end

To disable for a namespace, in the initializer:

ActiveAdmin.setup do |config|
  config.namespace :my_namespace do |my_namespace|
    my_namespace.filters = false
  end
end

Or to disable for the entire application:

ActiveAdmin.setup do |config|
  config.filters = false
end

You can also add a filter and still preserve the default filters:

preserve_default_filters!
filter :author

Index default sort order

You can define the default sort order for index pages:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  config.sort_order = "name_asc"
end

Index pagination

You can set the number of records per page per resources:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  config.per_page = 10
end

You can also disable pagination:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do
  config.paginate = false
end

If you have a very large database, you might want to disable SELECT COUNT(*) queries caused by the pagination info at the bottom of the page:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do

  # disable pagination total
  index :pagination_total => false do
    #...
  end

end

Disable CSV, XML and JSON export

You can remove links to download CSV, XML and JSON exports:

index :download_links => false do
end

Customizing Download Links

There are multiple ways to either remove the download links per resource listing, or customize the formats that are shown. Customize the formats by passing an array of symbols, or pass false to hide entirely.

Customizing the download links per resource:

ActiveAdmin.register Post do

  # hide the links entirely
  index :download_links => false

  # only show a PDF export
  index :download_links => [:pdf]

end

If you want to customize download links for every resource throughout the application, configure that in the active_admin initializer.

ActiveAdmin.setup do |config|

  # Disable entirely
  config.download_links = false

  # Want PDF added to default download links
  config.download_links = [:csv, :xml, :json, :pdf]

end