Rails Application Admin Section

Question

I am working on my first Rails application and want to create an admin section.

Do I want to keep my views and controllers completely separate (that is, in separate directories) for the admin section and the rest of the site?

How can I organize my views/controllers in custom directories (how do I configure the routing)?

Answer 1

To create your admin controllers:

script/generate controller admin/articles

Then in your routes.rb file

map.resource :admin do |admin|
  admin.resources :articles, :path_prefix => "admin", :name_prefix => "admin_", :controller => "admin/articles"
end

You could then access the index url for this:

<%= link_to "Articles Admin", admin_articles_path %>

Answer 2

You could also keep the apps and controllers in their usual places and use Rails filters to control access, which is what I think you're looking for here.

If you have the AWDWR Book handy, flip to Chap11 Task F Administrivia

• Basically define an authorize method in app\controllers\application.rb, which checks authorization, redirects to login page if not logged in et.all
• Mark controllers you want to restrict access to with before_filter s

.

class AdminController < ApplicationController
   before_filter :authorize
   #  ... the rest of the code
end

This will intercept all calls to actions defined in AdminController and force them to go via authorize

Answer 3

map.namespace :admin do |admin|
  admin.register :controller => 'main', :action => 'register'
  admin.login, :controller => 'main', action => 'login'
  # ...
end

This is how you namespace things, add this to the other comments here about authorizing things and you're away. Have a look at the restful_authentication plugin to do your user management, much quicker and easier than rolling your own.

The above routing assumes the controllers and their views are in a subdirectory called admin, which I think is what you want.