Relations

@adminjs/relations

@adminjs/relations is a feature which allows you to manage one-to-many and many-to-many relations within your admin panel.

As of version 1.0.0 it supports:

• listing multiple one-to-many relations with pagination but no filters in the details view of a record,

• listing multiple many-to-many relations with pagination but no filters in the details view of a record,

• editing and creating one-to-many relations,

• editing many-to-many relations,

• deleting records listed in one-to-many table (if you want to only remove the relation, you can just modify the target record)

• deleting relations in junction table of many-to-many relation or deleting the target record of a many-to-many relation (it also deleted the relation in junction table)

• navigating to details view of a target relation,

• adding an existing record to a many-to-many relation or creating a new record which will be assigned to your many-to-many relation.

One-To-Many List

Many-To-Many List

Many-To-Many Modal

Installation

@adminjs/relations is a premium feature which can be purchased at https://cloud.adminjs.co

All premium features currently use One Time Payment model and you can use them in all apps that belong to you. Once you purchase the addon, you will receive a license key which you should provide in @adminjs/relations configuration in your application's code.

Installing the library:

$ yarn add @adminjs/relations

The license key should be provided to owningRelationSettingsFeature:

owningRelationSettingsFeature({
  licenseKey: process.env.LICENSE_KEY,
  // the rest of the config
})

targetRelationSettingsFeature does not require a license key as it's role is mostly utility-only. The documentation below describes the configuration objects and setup instructions in more detail.

If you encounter any issues or require help installing the package please contact us at [e-mail] or through our Discord server.

Usage

Similarly to other features, the @adminjs/relations feature has to be imported into features configuration section of your resource. @adminjs/relations exports two separate feature that you must configure in order for the functionality to work:

• owningRelationSettingsFeature is used to configure the relations that you will want to manage later,

• targetRelationSettingsFeature doesn't require any configuration, but it has to be included in targetted resource in order for redirects and many-to-many assignments to work properly.

The two features will be explained in more detail in the later parts of this guide.

Example Database Structure

The usage guide will be based on sample database tables which can be represented by the following interfaces:

Generic

interface IOrganization {
  id: number;
  name: string;
}

interface ITeam {
  id: number;
  name: string;
}

interface IPerson {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  email: string;
  organizationId: number;
}

interface ITeamMember {
  id: number;
  personId: number;
  teamId: number;
}

interface IOffice {
  id: number;
  name: string;
  address: string;
  organizationId: string;
}

/*
  Person belongs to 1 Organization
  Organization has many Persons
  Office belongs to 1 Organization
  Organization has many Offices
  Person belongs to multiple Teams through TeamMember
  Team belongs to multiple Persons through TeamMember
*/

Prisma Schema

generator client {
    provider = "prisma-client-js"
}

datasource db {
    provider = "postgresql"
    url      = env("DATABASE_URL")
}

model Organization {
    id      Int      @id @default(autoincrement())
    name    String
    persons Person[]

    @@map("organizations")
}

model Person {
    id                  Int          @id @default(autoincrement())
    firstName           String       @map("first_name")
    lastName            String       @map("last_name")
    email               String
    phone               String
    dateOfBirth         DateTime?     @map("date_of_birth")
    isActive            Boolean
    organization        Organization @relation(fields: [organizationId], references: [id])
    organizationId      Int          @map("organization_id")

    teams               TeamMember[]

    @@map("persons")
}

model Team {
    id                  Int         @id @default(autoincrement())
    name                String
    members             TeamMember[]

    @@map("teams")
}

model TeamMember {
    id                  Int         @id @default(autoincrement())
    personId            Int         @map("person_id")
    person              Person      @relation(fields: [personId], references: [id])
    teamId              Int         @map("team_id")
    team                Team        @relation(fields: [teamId], references: [id])

    @@map("team_members")
}

@adminjs/relations is adapter-agnostic which means you can use it regardless of the database adapter you had installed. Nevertheless, some ORMs automatically generate and manage junction tables for you without you having to actually create entities for them in your codebase. This will not work with AdminJS and you will have to create actual entities for junction tables and register them as AdminJS resources since AdminJS uses them to find your M:N records.

const admin = new AdminJS({
  resources: [
    createOrganizationResource(),
    createPersonResource(),
    createOfficeResource(),
    createTeamResource(),
    createTeamMemberResource(),
  ],
})

AdminJS requires every resource to have a primary key column, this includes junction tables.

Feature Options

Below you can find feature options of owningRelationSettingsFeature which you can use for reference.

enum RelationType {
  OneToMany = 'one-to-many',
  ManyToMany = 'many-to-many',
}

type RelationsFeatureConfig = {
  /* Your ComponentLoader instance, ideally you will create it in a separate file
  and import where it's needed. Documentation: https://docs.adminjs.co/ui-customization/writing-your-own-components */
  componentLoader: ComponentLoader;
  /* Your license key */
  licenseKey: string;
  /* A configuration object for relations that will be managable in a given resource. */
  relations: {
    /* A name of a relation. It will be used as a name in tabbed table (see screenshots above) */
    [resourceId: string]: {
      /* A relation type which can be either `one-to-many` or `many-to-many` */
      type: RelationType;
      /* A junction resource/table configuration. It is only required for `many-to-many` */
      junction?: {
        /* A "joinKey" inside junction table. If configuring for "Team", it can be "teamId". */
        joinKey: string;
        /* An "inverseJoinKey" inside junction table. If "Team" has a M:N relation with "Person", it can be "personId" */
        inverseJoinKey: string;
        /* A resource ID of the junction table, for example: "TeamMember" */
        throughResourceId: string;
      };
      /* A target resource/table configuration. A target is a resource which is listed in the table. */
      target: {
        /* A "resourceId" of the target. Example: "Person" */
        resourceId: string;
        /* A "joinKey" of the target. Example: "organizationId" */
        joinKey?: string;
      };
    }
  };
  /* An optional field which allows you to specify a different property key which will be used
  to display relations table. By default it adds `relations` to details view of your resource. */
  propertyKey?: string;
};

One-To-Many

If using Prisma, configure the joinKey and inverseJoinKey options by providing the relation names instead of foreign keys, for example: organization instead of organizationId

According to the database structure described above as well as the presented configuration options of owningRelationSettingsFeature, this is how you can add this feature to Organization resource which can have many Persons and Offices

organization.resource.ts

import { owningRelationSettingsFeature, type RelationType } from '@adminjs/relations'
import { componentLoader } from './component-loader.js';
import { Organization } from './models/index.js';

export const createOrganizationResource = () => ({
  resource: Organization,
  features: [
    owningRelationSettingsFeature({
      componentLoader,
      licenseKey: process.env.LICENSE_KEY,
      relations: {
        persons: {
          type: RelationType.OneToMany,
          target: {
            joinKey: 'organizationId',
            resourceId: 'Person',
          },
        },
        offices: {
          type: RelationType.OneToMany,
          target: {
            joinKey: 'organizationId',
            resourceId: 'Office',
          },
        },
      },
    }),
  ],
});

Additionally, in your Office and Person resources you will have to add targetRelationSettingsFeature:

office.resource.ts

import { targetRelationSettingsFeature } from '@adminjs/relations';
import { Office } from './models/index.js';

export const createOfficeResource = () => ({
  resource: Office,
  features: [targetRelationSettingsFeature()],
});

person.resource.ts

import { targetRelationSettingsFeature } from '@adminjs/relations';
import { Person } from './models/index.js';

export const createPersonResource = () => ({
  resource: Person,
  features: [targetRelationSettingsFeature()],
});

If you configure your resources as shown above, you should be able to see Persons and Offices tabs in your Organization record's details view.

Many-To-Many

The example below shows how you can configure a many-to-many relation between Team and Person through TeamMember.

team.resource.ts

import { owningRelationSettingsFeature, type RelationType } from '@adminjs/relations';
import { Team } from './models/index.js';
import { componentLoader } from './component-loader.js';

export const createTeamResource = () => ({
  resource: Team,
  options: {
    navigation: { icon: 'Users' },
  },
  features: [
    owningRelationSettingsFeature({
      componentLoader,
      licenseKey: process.env.LICENSE_KEY,
      relations: {
        members: {
          type: RelationType.ManyToMany,
          junction: {
            joinKey: 'teamId',
            inverseJoinKey: 'personId',
            throughResourceId: 'TeamMember',
          },
          target: {
            resourceId: 'Person',
          },
        },
      },
    }),
  ],
});

Additionally, in your Person resource you will have to make sure to add targetRelationSettingsFeature. Of course, if you had added it before you don't have to add it multiple times.

person.resource.ts

import { targetRelationSettingsFeature } from '@adminjs/relations';
import { Person } from './models/index.js';

export const createPersonResource = () => ({
  resource: Person,
  features: [targetRelationSettingsFeature()],
});

Role Based Access Control

By default all actions related to managing the relations will be available for everyone. You can modify the accessibility in the same way you modify accessibility of your custom actions.

@adminjs/relations introduces the following new actions to your resource:

• findRelation is used to list one-to-many and many-to-many records from the target resource,

• addManyToManyRelation is used to add existing records to a junction table for many-to-many relations

• deleteRelation is used to delete a record from a junction table, deleting the relation in the process, but leaving both records

Taking Team resource from above as an example, you can allow these actions only for users with role Admin by doing the following changes:

import { owningRelationSettingsFeature, type RelationType } from '@adminjs/relations';
import { Team } from './models/index.js';
import { componentLoader } from './component-loader.js';

const onlyForAdmin = ({ currentAdmin }) => currentAdmin.role === 'Admin';

export const createTeamResource = () => ({
  resource: Team,
  options: {
    navigation: { icon: 'Users' },
    actions: {
      findRelation: { isAccessible: onlyForAdmin },
      addManyToManyRelation: { isAccessible: onlyForAdmin },
      deleteRelation: { isAccessible: onlyForAdmin },
    },
  },
  features: [
    owningRelationSettingsFeature({
      componentLoader,
      licenseKey: process.env.LICENSE_KEY,
      relations: {
        members: {
          type: RelationType.ManyToMany,
          junction: {
            joinKey: 'teamId',
            inverseJoinKey: 'personId',
            throughResourceId: 'TeamMember',
          },
          target: {
            resourceId: 'Person',
          },
        },
      },
    }),
  ],
});

You can read more about RBAC in AdminJS in this tutorial.