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Admin Customization

The creation process does not create hundreds of lines of JavaScript and HTML.

Instead, it creates an _application model, represented in the admin.yaml file. So, you can customize it easily, without requiring extensive JavaScript/HTML background, or deciphering generated code.

Key Take-away: instant admin app, with logic, easy to customize

Intelligent Default Creation

The system makes reasonable attempts to create useful applications

  • automatic joins
  • "favorite" fields are displayed first, such as field named name.
  • You can configure your favorite names when creating: 
    ApiLogicServer create --project_name=my-project \
                      --db_url=nw+ \
                      --favorites='nom nommes'
  • non-favorites (such as id) can be identified with the --non_favorites argument.

Edit admin.yaml

While these defaults are useful in creating a recognizable application, you will want to control the display order, override labels and so forth. You can specify such customizations by editing the admin.yaml file below.

This file is created initially by the system, so it's not necessary to learn the syntax in detail. Instead, it's straight-forward to alter the file using your IDE or text editor.

Press Browser refresh to reload the application after you make changes; it is not necessary to restart the server

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Models and admin correlation

See this section.

Not altered on rebuild

The rebuild commands do not override your customizations. They do recreate admin-created.yaml. You can use this to merge into your admin.yaml, e.g., to pick up new tables, relationships, etc.

 

show_when

You can provide an expression that determines when a field (and its caption) are hidden. For example, you might show the Dues only when the EmployeeType is Hourly, by declaring this in your admin.yaml:

admin-cust

Dues is hidden for non Hourly:

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and is visible for Hourly:

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It also works on update, such as insert:

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Hiding Fields in Insert Mode

Note you can hide fields depending on the state of the form, e.g. for OrderDetail, we can hide the Id since it is generated by the system:

  OrderDetail:
    attributes:
      - label: ' Id*'
        name: Id
        search: true
        sort: true
        show_when: isInserting == false

 

Multiple admin.yaml files

When creating your own admin files, we recommend starting with the created one.

Also, use caution in removing resources, since these may be used in joins and lookups.