Configuration

Application configuration is done in the initialization file install by running the installation generator. This file is placed in config/initializers/app_kit.rb.

Dashboard

The dashboard must be setup from this file, since it does not have an associated resource, or model. The dashboard is meant to be a collection of useful overview information for the user.

Tables

The primary purpose of the dashboard is to display specific types of tabular data. Tables are created by the table command.

AppKit.setup do |config|
  dashboard do
    table :invoice, title: 'Open Invoices', :scope => :open
  end
end

• title (string) - The title of the table. If not specified the plural name of the resource will be used.
• scope (symbol) - The name of a scope to be used. This scope should be defined on the model. If not specified all records will be returned.

Resources

Resources are the configuration object for a specific set of data, namely a model. A resource should be defined for each model that the application needs to build controllers and views for.

Resource files are expected to be in app/app_kit.

Generating resources

AppKit comes with a generator for creating resource files. From the root of your rails project run:

rails g app_kit:resource MODEL_NAME

This will create a new file inside the app/app_kit/ folder with a default configurations.

An example resource definition may look like this:

AppKit.Register Invoice do
  show_in_navigation true
  icon 'list'

  field :invoice_number, editable: false
  field :invoice_total, editable: false, :formatter => :currency
  field :invoice_date, :formatter => :date
  field :published, show_in_table: false

  before(:new) { |record|
    record.invoice_number =  record.set_invoice_number
  }
end

Configuration commands

• show_in_navigation (boolean) - If set to true a menu item will be created in the navigation for interacting with this model. (defaults to true)
• icon (string) - A string value for the icon to use for this item. This icon is used in the menu and panel titles for the resource. AppKit uses font-awesome for creating icons/glyphs. This string should be the icon name from the font-awesome list.

Defining fields

Resource fields are the data attributes on the model that will be displayed when viewing tables or records. Fields are defined with the field command:

field model_name, options_hash

Field options

• editable (boolean) - If set to true the field will be editable when editing a record. This will also control attribute whitelisting. (default: true)
• formatter (symbol) - The formatting that should be used when displaying the fields value.
  • :string - No formatting is performed (default)
  • :number - Formats the value as a number with delimitation.
  • :currency - Formats the value as currency appending currency symbols, and delimiting numbers. It will also automatically round the number to two decimal places.
  • :date - Formats the value as a simple date without time information.
• show_in_table (boolean) - Controls if the field should be used as a table column when listing records for this resource.
• show_in_detail (boolean) - If false the field will not be displayed when viewing a given record. (default: true)
• hide (boolean) - This automatically sets both show_in_table and show_in_detail. (default: false)
• editor (symbol) - The editor displayed for the field when editing a record. The default value is dependent on the fields data type.
• sort_field (symbol) - An alternate field to sort by. This can be used if the field is a virtual attribute and you want to use a different field for sorting operations. (default: nil)

Before actions

Before actions let you define small pieces of logic that should occure during the execution of an action on a given resource.

  before(:action_name) { |r|
    # some code to execute
  }

The action can be any of the standard restful actions :index, :show, :new, :create, :edit, :update, or :destroy. The block of code is also passed the record object that the action is currently acting on.