What is your favorite Rails admin tool and why?

Question

What is your favorite Rails admin tool and why? By admin tool I'm referring to those that let some users add records for all the tables, like the tool shipped with Django.

This question is subjective and I believe the matter is subjective, but I think it would still be nice to be able to read other people opinions and gather data on the strength of each tool. Feel free to also comment on why you are not using a particular tool.

Looking around I've seen these ones:

• Streamlined
• Typus
• admin_data
• active_scaffold
• full list

I think it would be excellent if there was one answer for and one answer against each tool and we just add information to each of them, in a very encyclopedic way, but I'm not sure if that's doable. Of course this question is a community wiki.

Answer 1

I've been using ActiveScaffold for awhile. I feel that I have pushed its limits fairly far and it reacts pretty well (i.e. it's pretty robust). I customize it considerably so that non-technical users can jump in and manage their own websites with it. Those who take the initiative to work with it seem to like it. I do find the default interface confusing at times but you could change that completely if you wanted. AS is very customizable. On the downside, I've definitely grappled with my fair share of AS bugs, but the project does improve and I'm satisfied with its results. I have never even heard of the other admin systems you posted, but Typus and admin_data look nice. My biggest concern would be how easy I can customize them for use by non-techs.

Answer 2

I've been using admin data in my last few projects and find it far superior to ActiveScaffold. When I used AS, it was always trying to do too much and that led to some problems. Admin data is completely non-intrusive. When it can't handle something in your data, it just displays a message instead of breaking your app.

Answer 3

I myself have used active_scaffold quite a bit and like it for certain tasks but I believe its niche is for power users not for mortals per se.

Streamlined was an interesting option but is officially unmaintained now which sucks. It really was a beautiful product but it never really seemed to get a lot of attention from the community so maybe they gave up on maintaining it publicly.

I've also not used Typus and admin_data but I ran into some references to Typus last night so clearly some very smart people are looking at it very hard.

On a last note, I think this blog post really summarizes an opinion I've come to recently after working with a Drupal firm for a bit. I believe that the reason admin interfaces haven't received the same amount of love is that Rails is built primarily for applications rather than content, which means that the people looking at backends are typically not mortals or can stand to look at an ugly backend.

Answer 4

In my experience Streamlined, Active Scaffold etc. often ends up limiting you and slowing you down in the long run, although it can be very efficient in the short run.

By combining the Inherited Resources and Formtastic plugins you can produce controllers and forms for your models just as fast as with a full-stack admin tool plugin, and it will leave you with greater flexibility and extensibility.

The tradeoff, however, is that neither of these plugins will give you the fancy lists that the admin tools give you. So as you say, it is indeed a matter of taste.