Write a backend server, and you get an Admin Dashboard for free!

3 min readMay 16, 2024

Teo is a great web framework, which can generate an Admin Dashboard for you.

The signing in panel for Teo Admin Dashboard

In this article, I’ll show you how to write a simple backend server with Teo and have an Admin Dashboard generated for free.

Create a project

Let’s create a new directory, and in the directory, create a file named “schema.teo”. You may install this VSCode plugin for syntax highlighting and auto completion.

connector {
  provider: .sqlite,
  url: "sqlite:./database.sqlite",
}

server {
  bind: ("0.0.0.0", 5054)
}

admin {
  dest: "../hello-teo-admin-dashboard",
  host: .inject("process.env.TEO_HOST"),
  languages: [.enUs, .enUk, .de, .es, .fr, .he, .hi, .ja, .ko, .zhCn, .zhTw]
}

@identity.tokenIssuer($identity.jwt(expired: 3600 * 24 * 365))
@identity.jwtSecret(ENV["JWT_SECRET"]!) @admin.administrator
model Root {
  @id @autoIncrement @readonly
  id: Int
  @unique @onSet($if($presents, $isEmail)) @identity.id
  email: String
  @writeonly @onSet($presents.bcrypt.salt) @admin.secureInput
  @identity.checker($get(.value).presents.bcrypt.verify($self.get(.password).presents))
  password: String

  include handler identity.signIn
  include handler identity.identity
}

@identity.tokenIssuer($identity.jwt(expired: 3600 * 24 * 365))
@identity.jwtSecret(ENV["JWT_SECRET"]!) @admin.administrator
model Admin {
  @id @autoIncrement @readonly
  id: Int
  @unique @onSet($if($presents, $isEmail)) @identity.id
  email: String
  @unique @identity.id
  phoneNo: String
  @writeonly @onSet($presents.bcrypt.salt) @admin.secureInput
  @identity.checker($get(.value).presents.bcrypt.verify($self.get(.password).presents))
  password: String

  include handler identity.signIn
  include handler identity.identity
}

enum Sex {
  male
  female
}

model Record {
  @id @autoIncrement @readonly
  id: Int
  string: String
  bool: Bool
  int: Int
  float: Float
  decimal: Decimal
  date: Date
  dateTime: DateTime
  sex: Sex
}

model NullableRecord {
  @id @autoIncrement @readonly
  id: Int
  string: String?
  bool: Bool?
  int: Int?
  float: Float?
  decimal: Decimal?
  date: Date?
  dateTime: DateTime?
  sex: Sex?
}

middlewares [identity.identityFromJwt(secret: ENV["JWT_SECRET"]!)]

autoseed dataset default {
  group Admin {
    record admin {
      email: "admin@gmail.com",
      phoneNo: "13588888888",
      password: "Aa123456"
    }
  }
  group Root {
    record root {
      email: "root@gmail.com",
      password: "Aa123456"
    }
  }
}

The Teo schema language is quite descriptive and readable. In the schema, we declare these things:

How the HTTP server binds
To which database we are connect
Where do we generate our Admin Dashboard code
Authentication middlewares
Model definitions
Seeding data

We declared so many things in just 100 of lines. The syntax is very concise.

In the authentication middleware and model decorators, you will find an environment variable named “JWT_SECRET”. Let’s create a file named “.env” with this content.

JWT_SECRET=my_top_secret

Install Teo

Depends on your tech stack and preferences, you can install the Rust version, Node.js version or Python version. Choose one of these.

To install the Rust version, use “cargo”.

cargo install teo

To install the Node.js version, run these commands to install it to the local directory.

npm init -y
npm install typescript ts-node -D
npx tsc --init
npm install @teocloud/teo

To install the Python version, venv is recommended.

python3.12 -m venv .venv
source .venv/bin/activate
pip install teo

Teo is like any other web frameworks, you can write route handlers with programming code and access Teo’s ORM API. In this article, we’re not going to demonstrate that.

Generate the Admin Dashboard

After Teo is installed, run this command to generate the Admin Dashboard code. The Admin Dashboard is written with TypeScript and React. It’s fully customizable. Generated code and user extended code do not conflict.

Rust command:

cargo teo generate admin

Node.js command:

npx teo generate admin

Python command (with venv enabled):

teo generate admin

Start the server

Use teo serve command to start the server.

Rust command:

cargo teo serve

Node.js command:

npx teo serve

Python command (with venv enabled):

teo serve

Start the Admin Dashboard

Navigate to the directory that the Admin Dashboard is generated. Install dependencies and start the webpack server. You need to have Node.js install in the system.