LightAdmin - Pluggable data administration UI library for Java web applications

The primary goal of the project is to speed up application development by bringing pluggable fully operational data management back-end for JPA based applications and to relieve your codebase for more important stuff.

Light Admin makes it possible to focus on the stuff that matters instead of spending time on auxiliary functionality.

Features

• DSL configurations: Allows developers to easily configure their administration user interface
• Displaying persistent entities: Customizable Listing & Quick Views with paging & sorting capabilities
• CRUD operations: Complete entities manipulation support (including their associations)
• Automatic Validation: JSR-303 annotation-based validation rules support
• Search: Allows users to search entities by text fields, dates, numeric values & associations
• Filtering Scopes: Use scopes to filter data by predefined criteria
• Pluggable Security: Authentication based on Spring Security
• REST API: Enriching your application with REST API based on Spring Data REST
• Easy integration: Servlet 2.5/3.0 web applications supported

Documentation & Support

• Web site: lightadmin.org
• Documentation & Guides: lightadmin.org/getting-started/
• Wiki: github.com/la-team/light-admin/wiki
• Live demo: lightadmin.org/demo
• CI Server: lightadmin.org/jenkins
• For more detailed questions: groups.google.com/group/lightadmin

Bug Reports

• Bug Reports: github.com/la-team/light-admin/issues

License

• LightAdmin is released under version 2.0 of the Apache License.

Contribute

You're interested in contributing to LightAdmin? AWESOME. Here are the basic steps:

• Fork LightAdmin from here: http://github.com/la-team/light-admin
• Clone your fork
• Hack away
• If necessary, rebase your commits into logical chunks, without errors
• Verify your code by running the test suite, and adding additional tests if able
• Push the branch up to GitHub
• Send a pull request to the la-team/light-admin project

We'll do our best to get your changes in!

Getting started

Declare repository in your POM

<repositories>
  <repository>
    <id>lightadmin-nexus-releases</id>
    <url>http://lightadmin.org/nexus/content/repositories/releases</url>
    <releases>
      <enabled>true</enabled>
      <updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
    </releases>
  </repository>
  <repository>
    <id>lightadmin-nexus-snapshots</id>
    <url>http://lightadmin.org/nexus/content/repositories/snapshots</url>
    <snapshots>
      <enabled>true</enabled>
      <updatePolicy>always</updatePolicy>
    </snapshots>
  </repository>  
</repositories>

Define maven dependency for using with Spring 4.0.X and the newest Spring Data

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.lightadmin</groupId>
  <artifactId>lightadmin</artifactId>
  <version>1.0.0.M3-SNAPSHOT</version>
</dependency> 

If you want to use LightAdmin with older versions

<dependency>
  <groupId>org.lightadmin</groupId>
  <artifactId>lightadmin</artifactId>
  <version>1.0.0.M2</version>
</dependency> 

Enable LightAdmin web-module in your web.xml if you have one:

<context-param>
  <param-name>light:administration:base-url</param-name>
  <param-value>/admin</param-value>
</context-param>

<context-param>
  <param-name>light:administration:security</param-name>
  <param-value>true</param-value>
</context-param>

<context-param>
  <param-name>light:administration:base-package</param-name>
  <param-value>[package with @Administration configurations, ex.: org.lightadmin.demo.config]</param-value>
</context-param>

Or enable LightAdmin web-module in your WebApplicationInitializer:

@Override
public void onStartup(ServletContext servletContext) throws ServletException {
  servletContext.setInitParameter(LIGHT_ADMINISTRATION_BASE_URL, "/admin");
  servletContext.setInitParameter(LIGHT_ADMINISTRATION_BACK_TO_SITE_URL, "http://lightadmin.org");
  servletContext.setInitParameter(LIGHT_ADMINISTRATION_BASE_PACKAGE, "org.lightadmin.administration");

  super.onStartup(servletContext);
}

Include your JPA persistence provider of choice (Hibernate, EclipseLink, OpenJpa) and setup basic Spring JPA configuration.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="UTF-8"?>
<beans xmlns="http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans"
       xmlns:xsi="http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema-instance"
       xmlns:jdbc="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc"
       xmlns:jpa="http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa"
       xsi:schemaLocation="http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc 
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/jdbc/spring-jdbc.xsd
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/beans/spring-beans.xsd
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa
                           http://www.springframework.org/schema/data/jpa/spring-jpa.xsd">
  
  <bean id="entityManagerFactory" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.LocalContainerEntityManagerFactoryBean">
    <property name="dataSource" ref="dataSource" />
    <property name="jpaVendorAdapter">
      <bean class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.vendor.HibernateJpaVendorAdapter" />
    </property>
  </bean>

  <bean id="transactionManager" class="org.springframework.orm.jpa.JpaTransactionManager">
    <property name="entityManagerFactory" ref="entityManagerFactory" />
  </bean>

</beans>

Create an entity:

@Entity
public class User {

  @Id
  @GeneratedValue(strategy = GenerationType.AUTO)
  private Integer id;
  private String firstname;
  private String lastname;
       
  // Getters and setters
}

Create an @Administration configuration in the package defined in web.xml previously:

public class UserAdministration extends AdministrationConfiguration<User> {

  public EntityMetadataConfigurationUnit configuration( EntityMetadataConfigurationUnitBuilder configurationBuilder ) {
    return configurationBuilder.nameField( "firstname" ).build();
  }

  public ScreenContextConfigurationUnit screenContext( ScreenContextConfigurationUnitBuilder screenContextBuilder ) {
    return screenContextBuilder
      .screenName( "Users Administration" )
      .menuName( "Users" )
      .build();
  }

  public FieldSetConfigurationUnit listView( final FieldSetConfigurationUnitBuilder fragmentBuilder ) {
    return fragmentBuilder
      .field( "firstname" ).caption( "First Name" )
      .field( "lastname" ).caption( "Last Name" )
      .build();
  }

Voila! You have a brand new LightAdmin back-end configured.

Check Out and Build from Source

1. Clone the repository from GitHub:

    $ git clone git://github.com/la-team/light-admin.git
   

2. Navigate into the cloned repository directory:

    $ cd light-admin
   

3. The project uses Maven to build:

    $ mvn clean install
   

Running from the Command Line

By default, the app will run in 'embedded' mode which does not require any external setup. The Tomcat 7 Maven plugin is configured for you in the POM file.

1. Navigate into demo application directory:

    $ cd lightadmin-demo
   

2. Launch Tomcat from the command line:

    $ mvn tomcat7:run
   

3. Access the deployed webapp at

    http://localhost:8080/lightadmin-demo
   

LightAdmin integration example

We prepared an example how easily you can integrate LightAdmin back-end to existing web application.

It's based on Spring Travel reference application.

1. Clone the repository from GitHub:

    $ git clone git://github.com/la-team/lightadmin-spring-travel.git
   

2. Navigate into the cloned repository directory:

    $ cd lightadmin-spring-travel
   

3. The project uses Maven to build:

    $ mvn clean install
   

4. Launch Tomcat from the command line:

    $ mvn tomcat7:run
   

5. Access the deployed webapp at

    http://localhost:8080/booking-mvc
   

Screenshots

Login to LightAdmin:

Dashboard:

List of persistent entities configured:

Search entities by criteria:

Quick view for particular entity:

Editing entity:

Show entity with all fields: