Hydra Administrative Tool for a Fedora Repository

A Rails engine providing an administrative interface to a Fedora Commons repository built on the Hydra project framework.

Status

This project should be considered experimental and not ready for production deployment. Versions earlier than 1.0 may change API and/or UI without notice or regard for backward compatibility.

Requirements

fcrepo_admin is designed for installation on hydra-head 6.0 or higher (requires active-fedora 6.1 or higher). See github.com/projecthydra/hydra-head/wiki/Installation-Prerequisites.

Installation

(In the future, we hope to automate some of these tasks with a generator.)

  • Add to gemfile

    gem 'fcrepo_admin'

    Then bundle install

  • Run the Blacklight and Hydra generators (if this is a new Rails app, not an existing Hydra head)

    rails g blacklight --devise
rails g hydra:head -f
rake db:migrate
rails g hydra:jetty  # if you need a development copy of jetty with solr and fedora

  • Mount the engine

    In config/routes.rb add this line:

    mount FcrepoAdmin::Engine => '/', :as=> 'fcrepo_admin'

    You may use any mount point (except perhaps '/catalog'). All routes include objects as a subpath.

  • Add CanCan action aliases (fcrepo_admin >= 0.4.0)

    In your Ability class (app/models/ability.rb) include the FcrepoAdmin::Ability module, for example:

    class Ability
  include Hydra::Ability
  include Hydra::PolicyAwareAbility
  include FcrepoAdmin::Ability
end

    FcrepoAdmin::Ability defines action aliases for permissions which are enforced on (ActiveFedora::Base) objects. If your application defines action aliases, please check FcrepoAdmin::Ability for conflicts as aliases are global.

  • Add Javascript (fcrepo_admin < 0.4.0)

    In app/assets/javascripts/application.js add:

    //= require bootstrap-tab

  • Customize catalog search results (optional)

    If you would like catalog search results items to link to the fcrepo_admin object show view instead of the catalog show view, create app/helpers/blacklight_helper.rb with this content:

    module BlacklightHelper
  include Blacklight::BlacklightHelperBehavior  # Default Blacklight behaviors
  include FcrepoAdmin::Helpers::BlacklightHelperBehavior # fcrepo_admin overrides
  # additional customizations here, if any
end

  • Add audit trail support (optional)

    To enable access to the Fedora audit trail data through the fcrepo_admin UI, include the ActiveFedora::Auditable mixin in your ActiveFedora models:

    include ActiveFedora::Auditable

Overriding fcrepo_admin behaviors

Configurable settings (fcrepo_admin >= 0.5.0)

To override default configurable settings for fcrepo_admin, create an initializer at config/initializers/fcrepo_admin.rb. You should start with this content:

module YourApp
  class Application < Rails::Application
    config.before_initialize do
      # Customized settings will go here
    end
  end
end

Refer to the default configuration settings at github.com/projecthydra/fcrepo-admin/blob/master/lib/fcrepo_admin.rb.

All configuration options are set by module methods prefixed by FcrepoAdmin, for example:

FcrepoAdmin.read_only = true

Helpers

Override objects helpers by creating app/helpers/fcrepo_admin/objects_helper.rb with this content:

module FcrepoAdmin::ObjectsHelper
  include FcrepoAdmin::Helpers::ObjectsHelperBehavior
  # override methods here
end

In particular you may want to override #object_title.

Override datastreams helpers by creating app/helpers/fcrepo_admin/datastreams_helper.rb with this content:

module FcrepoAdmin::DatastreamsHelper
  include FcrepoAdmin::Helpers::DatastreamsHelperBehavior
  # override methods here
end

Context Navigation Menus

fcrepo_admin >= 0.5.0

The configuration settings that control the items on the context menus are:

FcrepoAdmin.object_nav_items = [:pid, :summary, :datastreams, :permissions, :associations, :audit_trail]
FcrepoAdmin.datastream_nav_items = [:dsid, :version, :current_version, :summary, :content, :download, :edit, :upload, :history]

Each setting takes an array of symbols representing the items. You can start by copying the default values shown above. If you simply want to rearrange or remove items, then just modify the default arrays.

To add a custom navigation item, start by adding your own symbol to the approriate array setting. Then override the appropriate helper method (see section above on overriding fcrepo_admin helpers) – for object context nav, override #custom_object_nav_item in ObjectsHelper; for datastream context nav, override #custom_datastream_nav_item in DatastreamsHelper.

Each method takes a single symbol argument and should return either nil (meaning no menu item is to be added) or the content of a menu item. Do not include the <li></li> wrapper. You may want to use link_to_unless_current and/or put a condition on the menu item (i.e., so that nil is returned if the condition is not met).

fcrepo_admin < 0.5.0

The contents of the object context navigation menu can be customized by overriding the #object_context_nav_items helper method, or by copying and modifying the partial fcrepo_admin/objects/context_nav_items.

The contents of the datastream context navigation menu can be customized by overriding the #datastream_context_nav_items helper method, or by copying and modifying the partial fcrepo_admin/datastreams/context_nav_items.

Controllers

To override or extend controller behaviors, please consult Rails engine documentation and guides, such as edgeguides.rubyonrails.org/engines.html.

IMPORTANT: If you add a non-RESTful action to a controller, you will probably have to add a CanCan action alias to your Ability class. For this, you can use Hydra’s #custom_permissions callback:

class Ability
  include Hydra::Ability
  include Hydra::PolicyAwareAbility
  include FcrepoAdmin::Ability

  def custom_permissions
    alias_action :my_method, :to => :read
  end

end

Read-only mode

To suppress mutating behaviors (i.e, routes, nav items, etc.) regardless of user permissions, add this configuration setting:

FcrepoAdmin.read_only = true

Internationalization (i18n)

An effort has been made to support i18n on headings, menus, etc. See github.com/projecthydra/fcrepo-admin/blob/master/config/locales/fcrepo_admin.en.yml for the keys and consult the Rails documentation on how to provide your own translations or alternate text values.

Contributing

  • Consider first posting to [email protected] with a question or bug report, or submit an issue to the Github issue tracker at github.com/projecthydra/fcrepo-admin/issues.

  • Fork the git repository, create a feature branch, make your changes, and submit a pull request.

    It is preferable for all changes to be made in one commit, if possible.

Thanks!

License

See the LICENSE file in the root directory of the project for copyright and license information.

Licenses for code copied from other projects will be included in source files as required.