Clean your configuration with configuration_manager
If you’re spreading constants around your environments files to configure your Rails apps based on the environment it is running on, stop immediately! Let’s say it’s not very wise… ;)
There’s no point in having lots of different constants all around your code that basically all do the same thing: configure your app.
Instead, you should do something similar to what Geoffrey Grosenbach suggests in Rails Code Review — BTW, we translated that PDF in Italian: have a YAML file in your config directory where you store all of the settings for your app grouped by environment.
I said you should do something similar, because what Geoffrey suggests is just a starting point and that solution can be made a tad more elegant.
Which is what our new plugin is about!
ConfigurationManager allows you to have a single YAML file where you can store all of your settings, then setup a single constant which can be used all over your app by doing something like ConstantName.setting_name; or even ConstantName.group_of_settings.setting_name.
The YAML file should be placed in config/configuration_manager.yml and it should contain your settings like this:
everyone: &every_env
key1: value1
inner_hash:
key2: value2
development: &non_production_env
<<: *every_env
key3: value3
test:
<<: *non_production_env
production:
<<: *every_env
key4: value4
Then in your environment.rb you put the following:
MyConfig = ConfigurationManager.new_manager
Which will allow you to access your settings wherever you need them:
MyConfig.inner_hash.key2 #=> value2
MyConfig.key4 #=> value4
etc...
I hope you get the idea…it should make sense. :)
Development of the plugin is on Github, but you can install it from our usual Google Code repository:
script/plugin install http://wonsys.googlecode.com/svn/plugins/configuration_manager/
If you find any bugs, please let us know using our bug tracker.
