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Ask HN: If Django's admin is so awesome, why hasn't it been ported to Rails?

7 points by rufugee ↗ HN
I'm curious...seems like many arguments I hear for Django end up being the equivalent of "Django is an adequate Rails replacement...PLUS it has the unbelievable admin module".

Ok, great. I've played a bit with Django, and I do admit I like the admin interface. Makes things very nice when you're in the early stages of development. However, I have to wonder...if it's so great, and if folks are choosing Django over Rails simply because of the admin module, then why hasn't someone simply ported the admin module to Rails? Is it really that complex under the hood? Python and Ruby aren't that different...is there something there that makes this sort of undertaking impossible?

Just curious...

5 comments

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game2studios
I think that it has a lot to do with what each system was designed for. Both are great and can accomplish nearly the same things, the difference is that django was built for newspaper websites originally, so the focus on a standard admin CMS makes a whole lot of sense, especially when you are going to be using the same codebase on 5,10,20, etc... sites.

Rails was built around making client websites and in house web apps for 37 signals. Thus, perhaps on an app like Basecamp or many client sites, a standard admin panel wouldn't make a lot of sense. Something more custom would need to be built for those.

I find that most devs tend to "scratch their own itch", so that might explain the difference.

[deleted]
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icey
Isn't this kind of like asking "If Lisp is so great, why hasn't SLIME been ported to Java?"?

The admin in Django is great, but it's not the only way to do things.

gr366
Isn't that what Streamlined was trying to do? It looks like it was EOL'd a few months ago. Their site now mentions looking at ActiveScaffold as an alternative http://activescaffold.com/

Not to say they are trying to replicate Django's admin, but rather to present a semi-automated way of surfacing CRUD actions on your Rails models.

To go all the way to a Django-like admin, a Rails plugin might have to do things like tie into authentication, which is not standardized in Rails, and either create some of its own models or require the addition of attributes on existing models (e.g. for things like modification history).

It may be a combination of possibilities:

1. Rails devs create a bare-bones / scaffolded admin as needed

2. Rails apps that really need CMS/admin functionality build something highly customized to their app and haven't seen the value in generalizing it for the community (or it isn't easy to do)

3. Developers that need out-of-the-box admin haven't found a barrier to entry that prevents them from using Django instead of Rails

I don't know the answer, but I think game2studios makes a great argument that the 2 frameworks arose out of different needs.

xgamerx
Also not to say that this is equivalent to the admin panel in Django, but I do enjoy using this cool rails plugin:

http://github.com/neerajdotname/admin_data

I am not the developer but I do use it for most of my projects. Basically just presents an easy way to view and modify the data in your tables using a slick web interface and it requires basically no setup beyond the install.