EnvironmentConfig

This gem provides a unified way to read configuration parameters from environment variables.

You can load a configuration from the environment using a load block:

config = EnvironmentConfig.load do |c|
  c.string 'FOO'
  c.integer 'BAR', 42
end

If any required variable is missing, an error will be raised. Errors can be suppressed by providing a default value as second parameter.

Albeit environment variables being string only, you can specify types when defining parameters:

• string
• symbol
• integer (base 10 encoded)
• integer_list (comma separated, base 10 encoded)
• boolean (only accepts true and false)
• string_list (comma separated)
• json
• yaml

Type conversions try to be strict and will throw an error, if the conversion can't be performed safely (e.g. an integer receiving abc will raise an error instead of parsing to 0).

Be mindful, that json and yaml allow you to pass rather complex configuration, but will not be able to validate the content beyond checking it is valid JSON/YAML.

In case you need to pass configuration with characters that could not safely be passed through environment variables directly, you can pass a Base64 encoded form of the parameters and tell EnvironmentConfig to decode the value prior usage. E.g.:

EnvironmentConfig.load do |c|
  c.string 'SOME_BYTES', base64: true
end

This works regardless of the chosen type for the variable.

After building the configuration, your values will be available:

• as methods on the config object
• as hash with string keys using to_string_hash
• as hash with symbol keys using to_symbol_hash

All keys are lower cased, so FOO_ARG will become config.foo_arg or config.to_string_hash['foo'].

For environment variables you will usually want to assign common prefixes, e.g.

export FOO_HOST=host
export FOO_PASSWORD=password

Oftentimes you don't want to have those prefixes in your application config, so you can strip them using strip_prefix:

# defining it
foo_config = EnvironmentConfig.load(strip_prefix: 'FOO_') do |c|
  c.string  'FOO_HOST', 'default_host'
  c.string  'FOO_PASSWORD'
  c.string  'OTHER_FOO_VALUE', 'test'
end

# using it
foo_config.host # default_host
foo_config.other_foo_value # test

Sometimes you just want to fetch a few unrelated values from the environment, but not create a configuration object.

There are fetch methods for all known types. For example:

EnvironmentConfig.fetch_integer('MY_PORT')
 => 42

If you want to check the correct definition of environment variables that you do not consume yourself (e.g. you know that a gem will consume them), just use the ensure helper method:

EnvironmentConfig.ensure do |c|
  c.string  'MY_GEM_CONFIG_VALUE'
  c.integer 'MY_GEM_OTHER_VALUE'
end

One possible integration into a Rails application could look like this:

# config/application.rb
module MyRailsApp
  class Application < Rails::Application
    # ...

    config.some_sub_configuration = EnvironmentConfig.load do |c|
      c.string  'FOO_HOST', 'default_host'
      c.string  'FOO_PASSWORD'
      c.boolean 'SOME_BOOL', false
    end
  end
end

# somewhere else
Rails.application.config.some_sub_configuration.foo