Rails Simple Config

A simple YAML based configuration for Ruby on Rails 3+, which supports shared settings, ERB and more.

Inspired in part by the database configuration in Rails, app_config and rails_config.

Installation

Add RailsSimpleConfig to your Gemfile:

gem 'rails_simple_config'

Run the generator to create the default configuration files:

rails generate rails_simple_config:install

The generator will create 3 files in your Rails config directory, namely:

secrets.yml
secrets.example.yml
config.yml

The secrets.yml should not be committed to source control. It should be used to keep settings which are considered a secret; such as your Amazon credentials. It is loaded first.

The secrets.example.yml file can be added to source control and should serve as an example of the settings contained in the secrets.yml file.

The config.yml file should contain all other configuration settings.

Usage

Define configuration settings

Define your settings in the generated secrets.yml and config.yml files, found in your Rails config directory.

Both files contain a shared section and sections with overrides for the respective development, test and production Rails environments. It can also contain ERB code so that more advanced configuration scenarios can be supported.

# example configuration

shared: &shared

  title: My Website Title
  description: Meta description of the site
  keywords: Meta keywords for search engines

  no_reply_email: noreply@example.com

  dynamic_setting: <%= 30 * 60 %>

development:

  # inherit shared settings
  <<: *shared

  # define additional settings and overrides

  # e.g. mail settings for mailcatcher
  smtp_server: localhost
  smtp_port: 1025
  mail_prefix: DEV -

production:

  # inherit shared settings
  <<: *shared

  # define additional settings and overrides

  # e.g. mail settings for send grid
  smtp_server: www.sendgrid.com
  smtp_port: 25

Access configuration settings

To access configuration settings in your Rails application, use the SimpleConfig global or the AppConfig alias for it.

For example, in your application layout:

<html>
  <head>
    <title><%= SimpleConfig.title %></title>
    <meta name="description" content="<%= SimpleConfig.description %>" />
    <meta name="keywords" content="<%= SimpleConfig.keywords %>" />

    ...

  </head>
  <body>

    ...

  </body>
</html>

In addition, unlike other Rails configuration solutions, SimpleConfig is available to the Rails development, test and production environment configuration files, initializers and routes during startup. It can be used as a replacement for environment variables; thus making your setup and code much cleaner.

For example, the SimpleConfig.no_reply_email will be accessible to the devise initializer when configuring mailer_sender:

# extract of the devise.rb initializer
Devise.setup do |config|

  # ==> Mailer Configuration
  # Configure the e-mail address which will be shown in DeviseMailer.
  config.mailer_sender = SimpleConfig.no_reply_email

  ...

end

Notes

SimpleConfig makes use of the ActiveSupport::OrderedOptions class, so accessing undefined settings will always return nil.

In development, the configuration is reloaded upon each request, however, any configuration used within the application.rb file and initializers will not be automatically reloaded, without having to restart your web server.

Project Info

RailsSimpleConfig is hosted on Github, where your contributions, forkings, comments and feedback are greatly welcomed.