ExAdmin

Note: This version has been updated to support both Ecto 1.1 and Ecto 2.0. See Installation for more information.

ExAdmin is an auto administration package for Elixir and the Phoenix Framework, a port/inspiration of ActiveAdmin for Ruby on Rails.

Checkout the Live Demo. The source code can be found at ExAdmin Demo.

Checkout this Additional Live Demo for examples of many-to-many relationships, nested attributes, and authentication.

See the docs and the Wiki for more information.

Usage

ExAdmin is an add on for an application using the Phoenix Framework to create an CRUD administration tool with little or no code. By running a few mix tasks to define which Ecto Models you want to administer, you will have something that works with no additional code.

Before using ExAdmin, you will need a Phoenix project and an Ecto model created.

Installation

Add ex_admin to your deps:

Hex

mix.exs

  defp deps do
     ...
     {:ex_admin, "~> 0.8"},
     ...
  end

GitHub with Ecto 2.0

mix.exs

  defp deps do
     ...
     {:ex_admin, github: "smpallen99/ex_admin"},
     ...
  end

Add some admin configuration and the admin modules to the config file

config/config.exs

config :ex_admin,
  repo: MyProject.Repo,
  module: MyProject,    # MyProject.Web for phoenix >= 1.3.0-rc 
  modules: [
    MyProject.ExAdmin.Dashboard,
  ]

Fetch and compile the dependency

mix do deps.get, deps.compile

Configure ExAdmin:

mix admin.install

Add the admin routes

web/router.ex

defmodule MyProject.Router do
  use MyProject.Web, :router
  use ExAdmin.Router
  ...
  scope "/", MyProject do
    ...
  end

  # setup the ExAdmin routes on /admin
  scope "/admin", ExAdmin do
    pipe_through :browser
    admin_routes()
  end

Add the paging configuration

lib/my_project/repo.ex

  defmodule MyProject.Repo do
    use Ecto.Repo, otp_app: :my_project
    use Scrivener, page_size: 10
  end

Edit your brunch-config.js file and follow the instructions that the installer appended to this file. This requires you copy 2 blocks and replace the existing blocks.

Start the application with iex -S mix phoenix.server

Visit http://localhost:4000/admin

You should see the default Dashboard page.

Getting Started

Adding an Ecto Model to ExAdmin

To add a model, use admin.gen.resource mix task:

mix admin.gen.resource MyModel

Add the new module to the config file:

config/config.exs

config :ex_admin,
  repo: MyProject.Repo,
  module: MyProject,
  modules: [
    MyProject.ExAdmin.Dashboard,
    MyProject.ExAdmin.MyModel,
  ]

Start the phoenix server again and browse to http://localhost:4000/admin/my_model

You can now list/add/edit/and delete MyModels.

Changesets

ExAdmin will use your schema's changesets. By default we call the changeset function on your schema, although you can configure the changeset we use for update and create seperately.

custom changeset:

defmodule TestExAdmin.ExAdmin.Simple do
  use ExAdmin.Register

  register_resource TestExAdmin.Simple do
    update_changeset :changeset_update
    create_changeset :changeset_create
  end
end

Relationships

We support many-to-many and has many relationships as provided by Ecto. We recommend using cast_assoc for many-to-many relationships and put_assoc for has-many. You can see example changesets in out test schemas

When passing in results from a form for relationships we do some coercing to make it easier to work with them in your changeset. For collection checkboxes we will pass an array of the selected options ids to your changeset so you can get them and use put_assoc as seen here

In order to support has many deletions you need you to setup a virtual attribute on your schema's. On the related schema you will need to add an _destroy virtual attribute so we can track the destroy property in the form. You will also need to cast this in your changeset. Here is an example changeset. In this scenario a User has many products and products can be deleted. We also have many roles associated.

defmodule TestExAdmin.User do
  import Ecto.Changeset
  use Ecto.Schema
  import Ecto.Query

  schema "users" do
    field :name, :string
    field :email, :string
    field :active, :boolean, default: true
    has_many :products, TestExAdmin.Product, on_replace: :delete
    many_to_many :roles, TestExAdmin.Role, join_through: TestExAdmin.UserRole, on_replace: :delete
  end

  @fields ~w(name active email)

  def changeset(model, params \\ %{}) do
    model
    |> cast(params, @fields)
    |> validate_required([:email, :name])
    |> cast_assoc(:products, required: false)
    |> add_roles(params)
  end

  def add_roles(changeset, params) do
    if Enum.count(Map.get(params, :roles, [])) > 0 do
      ids = params[:roles]
      roles = TestExAdmin.Repo.all(from r in TestExAdmin.Role, where: r.id in ^ids)
      put_assoc(changeset, :roles, roles)
    else
      changeset
    end
  end
end

defmodule TestExAdmin.Role do
  use Ecto.Schema
  import Ecto.Changeset
  alias TestExAdmin.Repo

  schema "roles" do
    field :name, :string
    has_many :uses_roles, TestExAdmin.UserRole
    many_to_many :users, TestExAdmin.User, join_through: TestExAdmin.UserRole
  end

  @fields ~w(name)

  def changeset(model, params \\ %{}) do
    model
    |> cast(params, @fields)
  end
end


defmodule TestExAdmin.Product do
  use Ecto.Schema
  import Ecto.Changeset

  schema "products" do
    field :_destroy, :boolean, virtual: true
    field :title, :string
    field :price, :decimal
    belongs_to :user, TestExAdmin.User
  end

  def changeset(schema, params \\ %{}) do
    schema
    |> cast(params, ~w(title price user_id))
    |> validate_required(~w(title price))
    |> mark_for_deletion
  end

  defp mark_for_deletion(changeset) do
    # If delete was set and it is true, let's change the action
    if get_change(changeset, :_destroy) do
      %{changeset | action: :delete}
    else
      changeset
    end
  end
end

A good blog post exisits on the Platformatec blog describing how these relationships work: http://blog.plataformatec.com.br/2015/08/working-with-ecto-associations-and-embeds/

Customizing the index page

Use the index do command to define the fields to be displayed.

admin/my_model.ex

defmodule MyProject.ExAdmin.MyModel do
  use ExAdmin.Register
  register_resource MyProject.MyModel do

    index do
      selectable_column()

      column :id
      column :name
      actions()     # display the default actions column
    end
  end
end

Customizing the form

The following example shows how to customize the form with the form macro:

defmodule MyProject.ExAdmin.Contact do
  use ExAdmin.Register

  register_resource MyProject.Contact do
    form contact do
      inputs do
        input contact, :first_name
        input contact, :last_name
        input contact, :email
        input contact, :category, collection: MyProject.Category.all
      end

      inputs "Groups" do
        inputs :groups, as: :check_boxes, collection: MyProject.Group.all
      end
    end
  end
end

Customizing the show page

The following example illustrates how to modify the show page.

defmodule MyProject.ExAdmin.Question do
  use ExAdmin.Register

  register_resource MyProject.Question do
    menu priority: 3

    show question do

      attributes_table   # display the defaults attributes

      # create a panel to list the question's choices
      panel "Choices" do
        table_for(question.choices) do
          column :key
          column :name
        end
      end
    end
  end
end

Custom Types

Support for custom field types is done in two areas, rendering fields, and input controls.

Rendering Custom Types

Use the ExAdmin.Render.to_string/ protocol for rendering types that are not supported by ExAdmin.

For example, to support rendering a tuple, add the following file to your project:

# lib/render.ex
defimpl ExAdmin.Render, for: Tuple do
  def to_string(tuple), do: inspect(tuple)
end

Input Type

Use the :field_type_matching config item to set the input type.

For example, given the following project:

defmodule ElixirLangMoscow.SpeakerSlug do
  use EctoAutoslugField.Slug, from: [:name, :company], to: :slug
end

defmodule ElixirLangMoscow.Speaker do
  use ElixirLangMoscow.Web, :model
  use Arc.Ecto.Model

  alias ElixirLangMoscow.SpeakerSlug
  schema "speakers" do
    field :slug, SpeakerSlug.Type
    field :avatar, ElixirLangMoscow.Avatar.Type
  end
end

Add the following to your project's configuration:

config :ex_admin,
  # ...
  field_type_matching: %{
    ElixirLangMoscow.SpeakerSlug.Type => :string,
    ElixirLangMoscow.Avatar.Type => :file
  }

Theme Support

ExAdmin supports 2 themes. The new AdminLte2 theme is enabled by default. The old ActiveAdmin theme is also supported for those that want backward compatibility.

Changing the Theme

To change the theme to ActiveAdmin, at the following to your config/config.exs file:

config/config.exs

config :ex_admin,
  theme: ExAdmin.Theme.ActiveAdmin,
  ...

Changing the AdminLte2 Skin Color

The AdminLte2 theme has a number of different skin colors including blue, black, purple, green, red, yellow, blue-light, black-light, purple-light, green-light, red-light, and yellow-light

To change the skin color to, for example, purple:

config/config.exs

config :ex_admin,
  skin_color: :purple,
  ...

Enable Theme Selector

You can add a theme selector on the top right of the menu bar by adding the following to your config/config.exs file:

config/config.exs

config :ex_admin,
  theme_selector: [
    {"AdminLte",  ExAdmin.Theme.AdminLte2},
    {"ActiveAdmin", ExAdmin.Theme.ActiveAdmin}
  ],
  ...

Overriding the model name

You can override the name of a model by defining a model_name/0 function on the module. This is useful if you want to use a different module for some of your actions.

admin/my_model.ex

def model_name do
  "custom_name"
end

Authentication

ExAdmin leaves the job of authentication to 3rd party packages. For an example of using Coherence checkout the Contact Demo Project.

Visit the Wiki for more information on adding Authentication.

Contributing

We appreciate any contribution to ExAdmin. Check our CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md and CONTRIBUTING.md guides for more information. We usually keep a list of features and bugs in the issue tracker.

References

• Detailed Example ExAdmin Demo
• For a brief tutorial, please visit Elixir Survey Tutorial
• Live Demo
• Docs

License

ex_admin is Copyright (c) 2015-2016 E-MetroTel

The source code is released under the MIT License.

Check LICENSE for more information.