AdminResources

A mountable Rails engine that automatically generates a full admin dashboard for your models. Register the models you want to manage, mount the engine, and you get a complete CRUD interface with zero boilerplate controllers or views in your app.

Features:

  • Auto-generated index, show, new, edit, and delete for every registered model
  • Dashboard with record counts for all registered models
  • Built-in admin authentication via Devise (own AdminUser model, own table)
  • Smart field rendering: JSON/JSONB pretty-printed, foreign keys linked to related admin pages, booleans as Yes/No, datetimes formatted
  • Smart form generation: checkboxes for booleans, dropdowns for foreign keys, textareas for JSON, etc.
  • has_one and has_many associations shown inline on show pages
  • Your own styling — dark sidebar, clean table layout, no external CSS dependencies

Requirements

  • Rails 7.0+
  • Ruby 3.0+
  • Devise 4.0+
  • PostgreSQL (for array column support) — other databases work but array columns won't be handled

Installation

Add to your Gemfile:

gem "admin_resources", github: "doeswork/admin_resources"

Or for local development:

gem "admin_resources", path: "../admin_resources"

Then run:

bundle install

Setup

1. Run the migration

Copy and run the engine's migration to create the admin_resources_admin_users table:

rails admin_resources:install:migrations
rails db:migrate

2. Mount the engine

In config/routes.rb:

Rails.application.routes.draw do
  mount AdminResources::Engine, at: "/admin"

  # ... rest of your routes
end

3. Configure your models

Create config/initializers/admin_resources.rb:

AdminResources.configure do |config|
  # Register with specific index columns:
  config.register "User",     columns: %w[id email created_at]
  config.register "Post",     columns: %w[id title user_id published_at]

  # Register without columns — defaults to first 6 columns:
  config.register "Comment"
  config.register "Tag"
end

4. Create your first admin user

Open a Rails console and create an AdminResources::AdminUser:

AdminResources::AdminUser.create!(
  email: "[email protected]",
  password: "yourpassword",
  password_confirmation: "yourpassword"
)

Then visit /admin and sign in.

Configuration reference

config.register accepts:

Option Type Default Description
columns Array<String> first 6 columns Column names to display in the index table 
AdminResources.configure do |config|
  config.register "ModelName", columns: %w[col1 col2 col3]
end

Model names must be strings matching the exact class name (e.g. "WorkflowStep", not "workflow_step").

What gets generated automatically

For each registered model, the engine provides:

Route Description
GET /admin/users Index — paginated table of all records
GET /admin/users/new New form
POST /admin/users Create
GET /admin/users/:id Show — all columns + associations
GET /admin/users/:id/edit Edit form
PATCH /admin/users/:id Update
DELETE /admin/users/:id Destroy

Route helpers follow the pattern admin_resources_<plural>_path and admin_resources_<singular>_path.

How field rendering works

Index + show pages

Value type Rendered as
nil nil (italic, grey)
JSON / JSONB column <pre> with pretty-printed JSON
Column named params or data Same as JSON
Foreign key (*_id) pointing to a registered model Clickable link to that record's admin show page
Boolean Yes / No
Time / DateTime YYYY-MM-DD HH:MM:SS
Everything else Plain text (truncated to 50 chars on index)

Forms

Column type Field rendered
:boolean Checkbox
:text Textarea (4 rows)
:integer, :decimal, :float Number input
:date Date picker
:datetime Datetime-local picker
:json, :jsonb Textarea (serialized to JSON)
*_id foreign key Dropdown (collection_select) populated with all records of the associated model
Column name contains password Password input
Column name contains email Email input
Everything else Text input

Show page associations

The show page automatically renders:

  • has_one associations: shown as a detail card below the main record, with View/Edit links if the associated model is also registered
  • has_many associations: shown as a table (limited to 20 rows) with a count and "New" link if the associated model is registered

Authentication

The engine bundles its own AdminResources::AdminUser model with Devise. It lives in a separate table (admin_resources_admin_users) and is completely independent from any User model in your app.

Devise modules included: database_authenticatable, recoverable, rememberable, validatable.

All admin routes require a signed-in AdminResources::AdminUser. Unauthenticated requests are redirected to the admin login page.

Development

Clone the repo and install dependencies:

git clone https://github.com/doeswork/admin_resources
cd admin_resources
bundle install

To install onto a local Rails app for testing, add gem "admin_resources", path: "/path/to/admin_resources" to that app's Gemfile.

To release a new version, update lib/admin_resources/version.rb and run:

bundle exec rake release

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome at https://github.com/doeswork/admin_resources.