#Gotchas

Session Commits & Asset Pipeline

When configuring the asset pipeline ensure that the asset prefix (config.assets.prefix) is not the same as the namespace of ActiveAdmin (default namespace is /admin). If they are the same Sprockets will prevent the session from being committed. Flash messages won't work and you will be unable to use the session for storing anything.

For more information see the following post: http://www.intridea.com/blog/2013/3/20/rails-assets-prefix-may-disable-your-session

Helpers

There are two knowing gotchas with helpers. This hopfully will help you to find a solution.

Helpers are not reloading in development

This is a known and still open issue the only way is to restart your server each time you change a helper.

Helper maybe not included by default

If you use config.action_controller.include_all_helpers = false in your application config, you need to include it by hand.

Solutions

First use a monky patch

This works for all ActiveAdmin rources at once.

# config/initializers/active_admin_helpers.rb
ActiveAdmin::BaseController.class_eval do
  helper ApplicationHelper
end

Second use the controller method

This works only for one resource at a time.

ActiveAdmin.register User do
  controller do
    helper UserHelper
  end
end

CSS

In order to avoid the override of your application style (with the Active Admin one), you can properly move the generated file active_admin.css.scss from app/assets/stylesheets to vendor/assets/stylesheets

Conflicts

With gems that provides a search class method on a model

If a gem defines a search class method on a model, this can result in conflicts with the same method provided by ransack (a dependency of ActiveAdmin).

Each of this conflicts need to solved is a different way. Some solutions are listed below.

tire, retire and elasticsearch-rails

This conflict can be solved, by using explicitlly the search method of tire, retire or elasticsearch-rails:

For tire and retire

YourModel.tire.search

For elasticsearch-rails

YourModel.__elasticsearch__.search

Sunspot Solr

YourModel.solr_search