Web framework with really good admin/CRUD module?

Question

Lot's (if not most) of the current Web frameworks provide an admin module for basic CRUD operations, but I find the ones I know usually very limited...

So, my question is, which Web framework out there provide the best administration backend?

By the best, I mean namely:

• Domain objects that can be heavily polymorphic. Attributes/relations defined in a class appear when editing a record/instance of any of it's subclasses (and sub-subclasses, and sub-sub-subclasses, etc).

• Abstract classes. It's ok to have abstract classes anywhere in the domain classes' hierarchy. Their attributes and relations also show in the records/instances of all descending classes.

• Relations. Allow to edit (out-of-the-box) the records/instances that have many-to-many relations, and relations with associative classes (e.g., django calls these intermediate models)

• Extension. Allow to extend the admin so that we can use our own "UI controls" for specific domain objects. Some information is just too "exquisite" for an out-of-the-box form-based control to work in a suitable way.

• UI Components. Instead of having to choose between using all of it or none of it, it'd be nice to have generic "UI controls" that one could reuse from within any page of the website, to edit specific domain objects.

Programming language is not an issue at this point, although I lean towards the languages (or frameworks) that allow me to express the most information at the domain model level (and that the admin module can then use to give me a richer UI).

Answer 1

I love WebObjects.

WebObjects -> EntityModeler -> Wonder -> ERD2WModernLook -> ERAttachment --> ERRest

Bam. Done.

Answer 2

Definitely good old WebObjects with it rule system called DirectToWeb. It generates everything at runtime based on rules. By default it can display all your entity's properties and relationships.

I guess that every current web framework will offer something like scaffolding, but often times, the work begins as soon as you change your model.

Check out this post and this teaser about the latest DirectToWeb-based framework, ERModern. You use nearly zero code for what you see in the video and you can build entire applications around it. It was sponsored by the iTunes team.

Edit for your bullet points:

• Abstract classes and domain objects that can be heavily polymorphic - You handle these using rules.

• Editing relations - No problem, it only depends on the design of your components. If you use ERModern, you get this for free.

• Generic UI components - This is exactly how DirectToWeb works. You use (or define your own) generic components that display themselves according to the current entity (an object inheriting from EOEnterpriseObject) and the rules that fired for the current state (the D2WContext, essentially a big dictionary).

You can see all of this in action in the 45 minutes long ERModern Intro Video.

Answer 3

I've been playing with Active Admin and Rails Admin for a couple of Rails 3.1 projects I am working on. While both are nice, I've migrated more and more to Rails Admin. I've found it easy to customize, it does a very nice job with associated models, and has a great default UI.

Rails Admin

Answer 4

This isn't an easy question to answer.

You never specify what language you want to use, and you named some features, but how much of these features do you want.

I mean I could suggest a number of frameworks and tools for ASP.Net MVC or Web Forms but what if you're a PHP developer or a Java developer?

I could suggest SharePoint (and I generally dislike sharepoint, but everything you want is in SharePoint), but then the question to ask is.

How much flexibility and freedom do you want to customize or how much do you want the framework to do and you just be a code monkey.

So I will give you just my opinion.

I use ASP.Net MVC for my custom apps. It does all of what you want and allows me the most freedom to create and extend with tools if I so to do so. Plus out of the box there's a user databse with roles I can easily create out of the boss once I run the app for the first time.

Also CRUD is completely easy and straight forward out of the box. just check it out http://www.asp.net/mvc there's a tutorial section that goes through what you're wanting that you could complete in half a day.

Then there are some OR/M like NHibernate, Entity Framework, Subsonic use www.google.com to find tutorials for these if you're not familiar with them.

Then there's SharePoint it has a learning curve but once you get past it it's pretty straight forward as it's easy to pinpoint bugs, focus on the business logic and not worry aobut data base schema (as you don't even need to touch a database).