Adding actions to dashboard

[gjackson12]

Is there a way to add custom actions to the dashboard view? Right now I just see edit, and destroy. Along those actions I would like to list a few other custom actions if possible.

[c-lliope]

@gjackson12 this has been on my wishlist for a long time now. 😄

At the moment, you need to do it all from scratch - run rails generate administrate:views:index YourResourceName, add a link, and add a custom controller action.

I have a few ideas in mind for how we could improve this process, but I'd love to hear your thoughts - what API would you want for this?

[gjackson12]

One other question. Let's say I added an action called "send_notification" to the Users resource. Do I need to create that route manually?

(thinking of some suggestions for the API)

[c-lliope]

@gjackson12 yep - you'd need to create the route yourself to match your controller action.

[c-lliope]

(that's how it works at the moment)

[gjackson12]

So I added the following route:

post 'admin/users/:id/send_notification', to: "admin/users#send_notification", as: 'send_notification_admin_user'

I also put the following in my controller:

def send_notification
end

Finally, I have the following in the view:

 <td><%= link_to(
   t("administrate.actions.send_notification"),
   [:send_notification, Administrate::NAMESPACE, resource]
 ) %></td>

I keep getting the following error:

undefined method `send_notification_admin_user_path

Any help would be appreciated.

[c-lliope]

hm... I think you might need to include a method: :post argument in your link_to helper.

[ariejan]

@gjackson12 are you defining that in the admin namespace? Your url helper would need to be prefixed with admin_ in that case. Check with rake routes if unsure.

[c-lliope]

@gjackson12 ping. Any updates here?

[johnmeehan]

Just change the order of the link_to attributes to [Administrate::NAMESPACE, : send_notification, resource]

        <td><%= link_to(
            t("administrate.actions.send_notification"),
          [Administrate::NAMESPACE, : send_notification, resource],
          method: :post
        ) %></td>

This will generate your link route correctly.

In my routes.rb I added a 'clone' action by adding

  namespace :admin do
     DashboardManifest::DASHBOARDS.each do |dashboard_resource|
      resources dashboard_resource
    end
    post 'palladio_styles/:id/clone', to: "palladio_styles#clone", as: 'clone_palladio_style'

    root controller: DashboardManifest::ROOT_DASHBOARD, action: :index
  end

This gives me the additional route I need:
admin_clone_palladio_style POST /admin/palladio_styles/:id/clone(.:format) admin/palladio_styles#clone

[joaodiogocosta]

@gjackson12, this is my slightly different approach:

namespace :admin do
  DashboardManifest::DASHBOARDS.each do |dashboard_resource|
    resources dashboard_resource do

      if dashboard_resource == :palladio_styles
        member do
          post :clone
        end
      end

    end
  end

  root controller: DashboardManifest::ROOT_DASHBOARD, action: :index
end

And the link follows the save convention as CRUD ones:

 <td><%= link_to(
            t("administrate.actions.send_notification"),
          [:send_notification, Administrate::NAMESPACE, resource],
          method: :post
        ) %></td>

Not perfect, but still, cleaner than having to write all the stuff by hand Rails' already generating for you.

[carlosramireziii]

@gjackson12 Were you able to get your custom action and link working?

There are a couple of good approaches outlined above. I'm going to close up this ticket for now.

[bo-oz]

Is there still any roadmap for Administrate? An easier API to add custom actions would be highly appreciated. I think generating the views for each model with custom actions, created unnecessary amounts of boilerplate. Would be great if there was a way to define the actions in the Dashboard or Controller class.

[vizcay]

Hi, why is this closed? Is not a fair feature request to have in the issue tracker?

If is open someone with a bit of background may jump and do it.

[jabbett]

In my case, I wanted to update a record's field value with a single click. I only needed to customize my model's _collection.html.erb file, since I leveraged the existing update controller action.

In this example, my model is Author, and I'm trying to change it's status field to active :

<%= button_to(
  "Activate",
  admin_author_path(resource),
  method: :patch,
  params: { author: { status: 'active' } }
) %>

I hope this helps others!

[jesseduffield]

I've been taking a look at Administrate as an alternative to RailsAdmin and it looks like the ability to easily add custom actions is the main thing that's currently missing. In rails admin you can specify actions against models and those actions will show up next to the default routes like so:

You can implement each action either as immediately doing something upon clicking it, or having it first show a form and then doing something upon form submission.

Actions also automatically appear at the end of tables for easy access:

I think that actions should be considered a first-class entity in Administrate, just like they are in RailsAdmin, and I believe that Administrate can find a way to implement it that aligns with its value of using as much regular rails as possible.

I'm eager to switch over to Administrate because I much prefer its general approach to RailsAdmin but it sounds like this shortcoming is going to be too onerous to justify the switch.

[nickcharlton]

@jesseduffield, could you open a new issue, and reference this one?

I think we should revisit this, as it has significant merit, but this particular issue has a lot of solutions which are likely not relevant any more and folks who are no longer so closely involved with Administrate.

[jesseduffield]

Sure thing, see #2743