Setup User Admin with ActiveScaffold

Context

Rails 2.0.2
Installed Restful Authentication plugin
Users table has a time_zone column
Installed Configuration Settings plugin
Installed TzTime and TzInfo::Timezone

References

Active Scaffold - This is the project page.

How to Approach Active Scaffold - Use cases and benefits

Install ActiveScaffold Plugin

Installation - Follow the Getting Started section to install the version of the plugin (1.0.1 at the time of this writing) at http://activescaffold.googlecode.com/svn/tags/active_scaffold

However, when you start the server an error occurs:

/vendor/plugins/active_scaffold/lib/extensions/action_controller.rb:26:in `alias_method': undefined method `render_action' for class ActionController::Base' (NameError)

To solve this install the 1.1.0 Release Candidate 1:

./script/plugin install http://activescaffold.googlecode.com/svn/tags/1.1.0_rc1

Once the install is complete, go to vendor/plugins and rename the folder 1.1.0_rc1 to active_scaffold.

Set up admin page

1. Create an Admin::UserController which will be located at /app/controllers/admin/user_controller.rb

class Admin::UserController < ApplicationController
  layout "admin"
  active_scaffold :user
end

2. Create the layout /app/views/layouts/admin.html.erb

<!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Transitional//EN"
      "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-transitional.dtd">

<html xmlns="http://www.w3.org/1999/xhtml" xml:lang="en" lang="en">
<head>
 <meta http-equiv="content-type" content="text/html;charset=UTF-8" />
 <title>Generic ActiveScaffold Layout</title>
 <%= javascript_include_tag :defaults %>
 <%= active_scaffold_includes %>
</head>
<body>

<%= yield  %>

</body>
</html>

3. Set up the columns that appear when listing, creating, and updating records by replacing the line active_scaffold :user at Step 1 with the following:

  active_scaffold :user do |config|    
    config.columns = [:login, 
      :email,
      :password,
      :password_confirmation,
      :activated?,
      :activated_at,
      :time_zone,
      :_configurable_settings ]

    config.columns[:time_zone].form_ui = [:time_zone]

    config.list.columns.exclude [ 
      :password,
      :password_confirmation ]

    config.create.columns.exclude [ 
      :activated?,
      :activated_at ]

    config.update.columns.exclude [ 
      :login,
      :activated?,
      :activated_at ]
  end

4. Exclude certain columns by adding the following to the active_scaffold :user do ... end block.

excluded = [:created_at, 
      :updated_at, :remember_token, :remember_token_expires_at,
      :salt, :activation_code, :crypted_password]

    config.list.columns.exclude excluded
    config.create.columns.exclude excluded
    config.update.columns.exclude excluded

Add `Activate` links to activate users

1. Add the following in the active_scaffold :user do |config| ... end block

    config.action_links.add('activate',
      :label => 'Activate',
      :type => :record,
      :method => :post,
      :inline => true,
      :crud_type => :update)

2. Add the method in Admin::UsersController

  # GETs should be safe (see http://www.w3.org/2001/tag/doc/whenToUseGet.html)
  verify :method => :post, :only => [:activate],
         :redirect_to => { :action => "activate_error" }

  def activate
    @user = User.find(params[:id])
    if @user.activated?
      flash.now[:notice] = "#{@user.login} is already activated."
    elsif @user.activate!
      flash.now[:notice] = "Activated #{@user.login}."
    else
      flash.now[:notice] = "Cannot activate #{@user.login}."
    end
  end

  def activate_error
    render :text => "Failed to activate. Invalid method #{request.env['REQUEST_METHOD']}"
  end

3. Add the layout for activate in /app/views/admin/users/activate.html.erb

/app/views/admin/users/activate.html.erb

<p class="message"><%= flash[:notice] %></p>

Extend ActiveScaffold

1. Add active_scaffold_extensions.rb in /lib. This will add a feature to make fields to select time zones with.

/lib/active_scaffold_extentions.rb

module ActiveScaffold
  module Helpers
    # Helpers that assist with the rendering of a Form Column
    module FormColumns
      def active_scaffold_input_time_zone(column, options)
        time_zone_select :record, column.name, TZInfo::Timezone.us_zones, :model => TZInfo::Timezone
      end
    end
  end
end

2. Make sure to activate the extension by adding the following line at the end of /config/environment.rb

require 'active_scaffold_extensions'

Making ConfigurableSettings Editable

1. Create /app/controllers/admin/configurable_settings_controller.rb

/app/controllers/admin/configurable_settings_controller.rb

class Admin::ConfigurableSettingsController < ApplicationController
  before_filter :login_required, :admin_required
  active_scaffold :configurable_settings
end

Ian Li