Active Admin

By default, the index page is a table with each of the models content columns and links to show, edit and delete the object. There are many ways to customize what gets displayed.

Defining Columns

To display an attribute or a method on a resource, simply pass a symbol into the column method:

  index do
    column :title
  end

If the default title does not work for you, pass it as the first argument:

  index do
    column "My Custom Title", :title
  end

Sometimes calling methods just isn’t enough and you need to write some view specific code. For example, say we wanted a colum called Title which holds a link to the posts admin screen.

The column method accepts a block as an argument which will then be rendered within the context of the view for each of the objects in the collection.

  index do
    column "Title" do |post|
      link_to post.title, admin_post_path(post)
    end
  end

The block gets called once for each resource in the collection. The resource gets passed into the block as an argument.

To setup links to View, Edit and Delete a resource, use the default_actions method:

  index do
    column :title
    default_actions
  end

Alternatively, you can create a column with custom links:

  index do
    column :title
    column "Actions" do |post|
      link_to "View", admin_post_path(post)
    end
  end

Sorting

When a column is generated from an Active Record attribute, the table is sortable by default. If you are creating a custom column, you may need to give Active Admin a hint for how to sort the table.

If a column is defined using a block, you must pass the key to turn on sorting. The key is the attribute which gets used to sort objects using Active Record.

  index do
    column "Title", :sortable => :title do |post|
      link_to post.title, admin_post_path(post)
    end
  end

You can turn off sorting on any column by passing false:

  index do
    column :title, :sortable => false
  end

Showing and Hiding Columns

The entire index block is rendered within the context of the view, so you can easily do things that show or hide columns based on the current context.

For example, if you were using CanCan:

  index do
    column :title, :sortable => false
    if can? :manage, Post
      column :some_secret_data
    end
  end