Blazer

Share data effortlessly with your team

Play around with the demo - data from MovieLens

Works with PostgreSQL and MySQL

🍊 Battle-tested at Instacart

Features

• Secure - works with your authentication system
• Variables - run the same queries with different values
• Linked Columns - link to other pages in your apps or around the web
• Smart Columns - get the data you want without all the joins
• Smart Variables - no need to remember ids
• Charts - visualize the data
• Audits - all queries are tracked

Installation

Add this line to your application’s Gemfile:

gem 'blazer'

Run:

rails g blazer:install
rake db:migrate

And mount the dashboard in your config/routes.rb:

mount Blazer::Engine, at: "blazer"

For production, specify your database:

ENV["BLAZER_DATABASE_URL"] = "postgres://user:password@hostname:5432/database_name"

It is highly, highly recommended to use a read only user. Keep reading to see how to create one.

Permissions

PostgreSQL

Create a user with read only permissions:

BEGIN;
CREATE ROLE blazer LOGIN PASSWORD 'secret123';
GRANT CONNECT ON DATABASE database_name TO blazer;
GRANT USAGE ON SCHEMA public TO blazer;
GRANT SELECT ON ALL TABLES IN SCHEMA public TO blazer;
ALTER DEFAULT PRIVILEGES IN SCHEMA public GRANT SELECT ON TABLES TO blazer;
COMMIT;

It is highly, highly recommended to protect sensitive information with views. Documentation coming soon.

MySQL

Create a user with read only permissions:

GRANT SELECT, SHOW VIEW ON database_name.* TO blazer@’127.0.0.1′ IDENTIFIED BY ‘secret123‘;
FLUSH PRIVILEGES;

It is highly, highly recommended to protect sensitive information with views. Documentation coming soon.

Authentication

Don’t forget to protect the dashboard in production.

Basic Authentication

Set the following variables in your environment or an initializer.

ENV["BLAZER_USERNAME"] = "andrew"
ENV["BLAZER_PASSWORD"] = "secret"

Devise

authenticate :user, lambda{|user| user.admin? } do
  mount Blazer::Engine, at: "blazer"
end

Customization

Change time zone

Blazer.time_zone = "Pacific Time (US & Canada)"

Change timeout PostgreSQL only [master]

Blazer.timeout = 10 # defaults to 15

Turn off audits

Blazer.audit = false

Customize user name

Blazer.user_name = :first_name

TODO

• better readme
• better navigation
• standalone version
• update lock
• warn when database user has write permissions
• advanced permissions
• maps
• favorites
• support for multiple data sources

Thanks

Blazer uses a number of awesome, open source projects.

• Rails
• jQuery
• Bootstrap
• Selectize
• List.js
• StickyTableHeaders
• Stupid jQuery Table Sort
• Date Range Picker

Created by ankane and righi

Contributing

Everyone is encouraged to help improve this project. Here are a few ways you can help:

• Report bugs
• Fix bugs and submit pull requests
• Write, clarify, or fix documentation
• Suggest or add new features