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.

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.