ActiveSettings

Settings in Rails.

It's heavily based on config gem.

I made my own because I don't like the idea of having a ghost class globally accessible that I can't modify (What if I want to add some convenient methods on Settings?).

Installation

Put this in your Gemfile :

git_source(:github){ |repo_name| "https://github.com/#{repo_name}.git" }

gem 'active_settings', github: 'jbox-web/active_settings', tag: '1.1.0'

then run bundle install.

Usage

1. Define your class

Instead of defining a Settings constant for you, that task is left to you. Simply create a class in your application that looks like:

class Settings < ActiveSettings::Base
  source    Rails.root.join('config', 'settings.yml')
  namespace Rails.env
end

Name it Settings, name it Config, name it whatever you want. Add as many or as few as you like. A good place to put this file in a Rails app is config/settings.rb

2. Create your settings

Notice above we specified an absolute path to our settings file called settings.yml. This is just a typical YAML file. Also notice above that we specified a namespace for our environment. A namespace is just an optional string that corresponds to a key in the YAML file.

Using a namespace allows us to change our configuration depending on our environment:

# config/settings.yml
defaults: &defaults
  cool:
    saweet: nested settings
  neat_setting: 24
  awesome_setting: <%= "Did you know 5 + 5 = #{5 + 5}?" %>

development:
  <<: *defaults
  neat_setting: 800

test:
  <<: *defaults

production:
  <<: *defaults

Keys are both accessible with a string or a symbol.

3. Access your settings

You can use different methods to access to values :

• by using method chains :

>> Rails.env
=> "development"

>> Settings.cool
=> "#<ActiveSettings::Config ... >"

>> Settings.cool.saweet
=> "nested settings"

>> Settings.neat_setting
=> 800

>> Settings.awesome_setting
=> "Did you know 5 + 5 = 10?"

• by using fetch method :

>> Settings.cool.fetch(:saweet)
=> "nested settings"

>> Settings.cool.fetch('saweet')
=> "nested settings"

You can provide default value :

>> Settings.cool.fetch(:foo, 'bar')
=> "bar"

>> Settings.cool.fetch(:foo) { 'bar' }
=> "bar"

• by using [] accessor :

>> Settings[:cool][:saweet]
=> "nested settings"

>> Settings['cool']['saweet']
=> "nested settings"

• by using dig method :

>> Settings.dig(:cool, :saweet)
=> "nested settings"

>> Settings.dig('cool', 'saweet')
=> "nested settings"

• by using key? method :

>> Settings.cool.key?(:saweet)
=> "true"

>> Settings.cool.key?('saweet')
=> "true"

You can use these settings anywhere, for example in a model:

class Post < ActiveRecord::Base
  self.per_page = Settings.pagination.posts_per_page
end