Create your own admin module

nestjs-admin provides a DefaultAdminModule that allows you to get quickly started. While it provides sensible defaults, there's multiple reasons you might want to use your own admin module:

  • Customize how to authenticate into the admin
  • Add custom admin endpoint
  • Customize the default messages (site name, login prompt)
  • Create multiple admin sites
  • etc...

How does the DefaultAdminModule work

To create your own admin module, you need to understand the lower level of the API that the DefaultAdminModule uses.

  • The AdminCoreModule handles all admin CRUD operations. AdminSite, AdminEntity, AdminController are all part of the AdminCoreModule. It expects all requests to be authenticated (ie request.user to be defined), or throws an error.
  • The AdminAuthModule provides the authentication. It listens to exceptions from the AdminCoreModule, and redirects to the login page. It provides its own endpoints for authentication. It is generic: it needs configuration to define how to validate admin credentials.
  • The AdminUserModule is an instance of the AdminAuthModule, using an AdminUser entity.

The DefaultAdminModule is an abstraction over the AdminCoreModule and the AdminUserModule.

It is possible to create the admin by writing your own abstraction on top of these modules, which allows you to configure them.

Create your own AdminModule

To start with, let's recreate the DefaultAdminModule, but in your own application using the lower-level modules above. For clarity, let's call it BackofficeModule.

// backoffice.module.ts
import { AdminCoreModuleFactory, AdminUserModule } from 'nestjs-admin'

const coreModule = AdminCoreModuleFactory.createAdminCoreModule({})
const authModule = AdminUserModule

@Module({
  imports: [coreModule, authModule],
  exports: [coreModule, authModule],
})
class BackofficeModule {}

Now, you can import the BackofficeModule in your AppModule instead of the DefaultAdminModule!

Custom AdminSite

The admin site is responsible for most of the work, like fetching/creating/deleting entities. To add custom behavior, you'll want to declare your own:

import { Injectable } from '@nestjs/common'
import { DefaultAdminSite } from 'nestjs-admin'

@Injectable()
export class AdminSite extends DefaultAdminSite {
  // Overwrite or add methods here
}

Then give this AdminSite to the AdminCoreModuleFactory.createAdminCoreModule in your BackofficeModule.

Custom AdminController

The admin controller handles the HTTP layer, before delegating the actual work to the admin site. To hook in routes, change requests/responses, add routes and pages, you'll want to declare your own:

import { Inject } from '@nestjs/common'
import { DefaultAdminController } from 'nestjs-admin'

export class AdminController extends DefaultAdminController {
  // Overwrite or add methods here
}

Then give this AdminController to the AdminCoreModuleFactory.createAdminCoreModule in your BackofficeModule.

← Custom authenticationAdminEntity →