Agile Web Development

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Active Scaffold

Most web applications have many more model objects exposed on the backend, or admin side, than they do on the front. Coding interfaces for all those models is redundant and a waste of resources when all you need is CRUD functionality that’s smart enough to handle all your ActiveRecord associations.

Enter the ActiveScaffold plugin. The successor to the popular AjaxScaffold project that amassed over 36,000 downloads, ActiveScaffold provides you with a wealth of dynamically created goodness:

  • An AJAXified table interface for creating, updating, and deleting objects
  • Automatic handling of ActiveRecord associations
  • Sorting, Search and Pagination
  • Graceful JavaScript degradation
  • RESTful API support (XML/YAML/JSON) baked in
  • Sexy CSS styling and theming support
  • More extension points than you can shake a stick at

Vitals

Home http://activescaffold.com/
Repository git://github.com/activescaffold/active_scaffold.git
License Rails' (MIT)
Tags Tag_red ajax authentication scaffold
Rating (66 votes)
Owner Richard White
Created 14 March 2007

Comments

  • Avatar
    jm
    18 July 2007

    It seems to be a great plugin, but lots of functionalities simply does not work. I gave up after 2 days of trying to modify the options...

  • butre
    30 August 2007

    it sounds great but it doesn't work following the 'getting started' advice

  • Avatar
    Peter Roome
    31 August 2007

    I found Active Scaffold quite easy to get installed. It has taken some perseverance though to stick with it. The API documentation is relatively broad but a little light in detail at times.

    The community is growing though and there are some very helpful people in the google group.

    Certainly worth trying for the experience.

  • Avatar
    Lorenzo Rizzatto
    7 September 2007

    This plugin is great! Tons of great functionalities, simple to manage and very wel documented. We love it and we use it in almost all our apps..

  • Avatar
    James Throgmorton
    9 October 2007

    This is a great plugin. This changes the way that you will use Ruby on Rails. Data becomes really really cool again.

  • abman
    31 October 2007

    Have been using this since it was ajax scaffold with generators. I come back to it about every few months or so and every time it gets so much better with more and more features.

  • Avatar
    9 February 2008

    It takes a bit of getting used to (I wish the docs made fewer assumptions, or provided more complete examples), but as rails plugins go, this one has great documentation, and amazing functionality.

    We are building a sophisticated, data-driven site at my company, and active scaffold has held up pretty well for most of our administrative needs.

  • Avatar
    11 February 2008

    I agree with Tom. It does take some time getting used to. Figuring out how to customize for my app took me almost two days. That could have been 4 hours if there were some better examples.

    Even so, after taking the time to learn it, I'm really thrilled. I just did another data intense rails project and was able to sort out my admin area in less than two hours.

    While it takes time and patience to sort out how to use it, it will save you time in the long run.

  • Avatar
    11 February 2008

    I agree with Tom. It does take some time getting used to. Figuring out how to customize for my app took me almost two days. That could have been 4 hours if there were some better examples.

    Even so, after taking the time to learn it, I'm really thrilled. I just did another data intense rails project and was able to sort out my admin area in less than two hours.

    While it takes time and patience to sort out how to use it, it will save you time in the long run.

  • Avatar
    Student
    16 February 2009

    You need to update the information. They've gone to git.

    While I agree that the tool is quite useful, there is a lot of work to do to learn where all of the hooks are -- especially the undocumented ones. Moreover, they are leaving WAY too much logic in the views, which causes serious coupling issue if you get to that point. Fundamentally, coupling is hard to avoid at this level, but they can do much better.

  • Jon
    20 August 2009

    New github URL added.

    Check out the Google group for Active Scaffold: very active and responsive.

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