jbuilder VS RailsAdmin

# Use the Puma web server [https://github.com/puma/puma] gem "puma", "~> 5.0" # Build JSON APIs with ease [https://github.com/rails/jbuilder] # gem "jbuilder" gem 'rack-cors' gem "devise" gem "jsonapi-serializer" gem 'devise-jwt' gem 'active_model_serializers' gem 'followability' gem 'dotenv-rails', groups: [:development, :test, :production] gem 'sprockets' # Use Redis adapter to run Action Cable in production # gem "redis", "~> 4.0" # Use Kredis to get higher-level data types in Redis [https://github.com/rails/kredis] # gem "kredis" # Use Active Model has_secure_password [https://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_model_basics.html#securepassword] # gem "bcrypt", "~> 3.1.7" # Windows does not include zoneinfo files, so bundle the tzinfo-data gem gem "tzinfo-data", platforms: %i[ mingw mswin x64_mingw jruby ] # Reduces boot times through caching; required in config/boot.rb gem "bootsnap", require: false # Use Active Storage variants [https://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_storage_overview.html#transforming-images] # gem "image_processing", "~> 1.2" # Use Rack CORS for handling Cross-Origin Resource Sharing (CORS), making cross-origin AJAX possible # gem "rack-cors" group :development, :test do # See https://guides.rubyonrails.org/debugging_rails_applications.html#debugging-with-the-debug-gem gem "debug", platforms: %i[ mri mingw x64_mingw ] end group :development do gem "sqlite3", "~> 1.4" # Speed up commands on slow machines / big apps [https://github.com/rails/spring] # gem "spring" end group :production do gem 'pg' end

source "https://rubygems.org" git_source(:github) { |repo| "https://github.com/#{repo}.git" } ruby "3.1.0" # Bundle edge Rails instead: gem "rails", github: "rails/rails", branch: "main" gem "rails", "~> 7.0.4", ">= 7.0.4.2" # The original asset pipeline for Rails [https://github.com/rails/sprockets-rails] gem "sprockets-rails" # Use sqlite3 as the database for Active Record gem "sqlite3", "~> 1.4" # Use the Puma web server [https://github.com/puma/puma] gem "puma", "~> 5.0" # Use JavaScript with ESM import maps [https://github.com/rails/importmap-rails] gem "importmap-rails" # Hotwire's SPA-like page accelerator [https://turbo.hotwired.dev] gem "turbo-rails" # Hotwire's modest JavaScript framework [https://stimulus.hotwired.dev] gem "stimulus-rails" # Build JSON APIs with ease [https://github.com/rails/jbuilder] gem "jbuilder" gem "mongoid" gem "mongoid-grid_fs" gem 'bootstrap', '~> 5.2.2' #sourced from https://github.com/twbs/bootstrap-rubygem gem 'rack-cors' # Windows does not include zoneinfo files, so bundle the tzinfo-data gem gem "tzinfo-data", platforms: %i[ mingw mswin x64_mingw jruby ] # Reduces boot times through caching; required in config/boot.rb gem "bootsnap", require: false

For the longest time Rails was also incredibly slow at generating JSON, of all things. JBuilder [1] was a few orders of magnitude slower than using .to_json directly or other libraries.

[1] https://github.com/rails/jbuilder, maintained by DHH and the Rails team. AFAIR, the "official" JSON serialization DSL.

It's a builder DSL for protobuf messages, similar to jbuilder. If you ever used jbuilder, this would be really familiar, but there are small nuances of protobuf to be aware off :)

# Bundle edge Rails instead: gem "rails", github: "rails/rails", branch: "main" gem "rails", "~> 7.0.4" # The original asset pipeline for Rails [https://github.com/rails/sprockets-rails] gem "sprockets-rails" # Use sqlite3 as the database for Active Record gem "sqlite3", "~> 1.4" # Use the Puma web server [https://github.com/puma/puma] gem "puma", "~> 5.0" # Use JavaScript with ESM import maps [https://github.com/rails/importmap-rails] gem "importmap-rails" # Hotwire's SPA-like page accelerator [https://turbo.hotwired.dev] gem "turbo-rails" # Hotwire's modest JavaScript framework [https://stimulus.hotwired.dev] gem "stimulus-rails" # Build JSON APIs with ease [https://github.com/rails/jbuilder] gem "jbuilder" # Windows does not include zoneinfo files, so bundle the tzinfo-data gem gem "tzinfo-data", platforms: %i[ mingw mswin x64_mingw jruby ] # Reduces boot times through caching; required in config/boot.rb gem "bootsnap", require: false # Use Sass to process CSS # gem "sassc-rails" # Use Active Storage variants [https://guides.rubyonrails.org/active_storage_overview.html#transforming-images] # gem "image_processing", "~> 1.2" group :development, :test do # See https://guides.rubyonrails.org/debugging_rails_applications.html#debugging-with-the-debug-gem gem "debug", platforms: %i[ mri mingw x64_mingw ] end group :development do # Use console on exceptions pages [https://github.com/rails/web-console] gem "web-console" # Add speed badges [https://github.com/MiniProfiler/rack-mini-profiler] # gem "rack-mini-profiler" # Speed up commands on slow machines / big apps [https://github.com/rails/spring] # gem "spring" end group :test do # Use system testing [https://guides.rubyonrails.org/testing.html#system-testing] gem "capybara" gem "selenium-webdriver" gem "webdrivers" end

Ohh I see. The magic happens on that format method. If that becomes a pain to maintain, consider checking jbuilder out.

Try to include ActionView::Rendering in your controller. I had this problem with jbuilder and it was the workaround https://github.com/rails/jbuilder/issues/346

Build JSON APIs with ease [https://github.com/rails/jbuilder]

jbuilder

gem "rails", "~> 7.0.0" # The original asset pipeline for Rails [https://github.com/rails/sprockets-rails] gem "sprockets-rails" # Use postgresql as the database for Active Record gem "pg", "~> 1.1" # Use the Puma web server [https://github.com/puma/puma] gem "puma", "~> 5.0" # Use JavaScript with ESM import maps [https://github.com/rails/importmap-rails] gem "importmap-rails" # Hotwire's SPA-like page accelerator [https://turbo.hotwired.dev] gem "turbo-rails" # Hotwire's modest JavaScript framework [https://stimulus.hotwired.dev] gem "stimulus-rails" # Use Tailwind CSS [https://github.com/rails/tailwindcss-rails] gem "tailwindcss-rails" # Build JSON APIs with ease [https://github.com/rails/jbuilder] gem "jbuilder" gem "redis", "~> 4.0"

Like most things, it's probably a combination of things.

The Django Admin existed before Django publicly existed. That meant that once anyone started using Django they knew that they should constrain their use of Django in certain ways so that the Django Admin would work with their usage. Features that would be added to Django would be built with the Django Admin in mind.

Many tools like Flask or FastAPI don't have an opinionated model layer like Django. Without that, you can't really create an admin interface programatically. People could be storing their data in any sort of fashion anywhere. How would one build an admin system for something like Flask or FastAPI where there's no convention around how people set up data access? A lot of frameworks out there don't tell you "access your data in this way" or "this is how users will be authenticated." Without those two things, it's hard to really create an admin system.

There are similar systems available for some frameworks, but since they aren't part of the core framework, they don't get the same attention. Someone creates it, but it doesn't have the kind of community buy-in that sustains it. One of the odd things about Django is that the admin system is under `django.contrib` which indicated that they didn't intend for it to be in the core of Django forever, but that's not really how `django.contrib` ended up. It continued to be a core part of Django maintained as part of the framework.

Like I said, there are admin dashboards available in other frameworks like RailsAdmin (https://github.com/railsadminteam/rails_admin) or Core Admin for .NET (https://github.com/edandersen/core-admin) and I'm sure there's more. However, both Rails and .NET provide most of what Django provides (and a lot more than most frameworks). Rails and .NET both have a default data access ORM that a majority of people using those frameworks tend to use. .NET has built-in authentication/authorization so the admin can work off that. Rails doesn't have auth, but RailsAdmin uses some plugins.

We briefly considered migrating to a full-grown Rails admin interface, such as ActiveAdmin, RailsAdmin, Administrate or Avo. We especially liked Avo which is built on a very modern stack similar to ours (Tailwind + Hotwire + ViewComponents). In the end, we didn’t go this route as we found some of the options a bit too restrictive (even though Avo is very flexible) and we did not feel like trying to amend it to our needs. For example, Avo renders forms in a 1-field-per-row layout while we wanted something more similar to the Tailwind UI Stacked form layout. Nevertheless, we found a great deal of inspiration in the Avo code and its design principles.

- [rails_admin](https://github.com/railsadminteam/rails_admin)

rails_admin

https://github.com/railsadminteam/rails_admin is very popular and i find it very easy to use.

It's really helpful to have a way to track what's going on with your application in production, things like: number of user sign ups, status of user accounts, number of X new database entries etc. Out of the box dashboards like Rails Admin are great but only go so far, eventually you will want significant customizations.

I'm working on a rails project with rails_admin and multiple models. There are several people working on the backend and I want to remove the ability to edit some of the records which have a imported boolean set to true. This records should just be readable in rails_admin.

Having an admin panel in your Rails application is honestly, to me, the best thing to do when it comes to keeping track of your users and giving them permissions. Finding out how to have an admin panel though, that was tough, mainly because I wasn’t searching for the right thing. The rails_admin gem, so simple but can control so much! The installation and usage is very simple depending on what you are trying to use it on. I should probably tell you, I am using devise with the user having a boolean attribute called admin.

Check out Retool: https://www.ycombinator.com/companies/1564

A wswig for internal UI/dashboards has a lot of value for companies that don't have a dedicated internal tools team.

My company had an internal tools teams at one point but it got killed because of other business priorities.

We use https://github.com/sferik/rails_admin, that still requires development time and frontend knowledge, but the framework is terrible.

https://marmelab.com/react-admin/ is much better but also required development time and frontend knowledge.