NOTE FOR ACCLAIM: This is only meant to get us past the Psych 5 update on our way to Rails 7.1. The old settings.yml way of config should be going away before the end of Q1 2024 and at that point this can be removed from the acclaim-server gemfile and this repo should be removed.

Choices for Rails

Easy-peasy external settings for your Rails app.

# Gemfile
gem 'choices'

In your app initializer block:

config.from_file 'settings.yml'

This will read configuration from "config/settings.yml" and, additionally, "settings.local.yml" if it exists. You should check the main file into version control, but not the ".local" file which is to be used for per-machine configuration: tweaks in development or private keys in production, for example.

# .gitignore
config/settings.local.yml

Configuration files can contain ERB; this is useful for reading in dynamic config such as from environment variables:

# settings.yml
defaults: &defaults
  secret_token: <%= ENV['COOKIE_SECRET'] %>
  heroku: <%= !!ENV['HEROKU_TYPE'] %>
  mongodb:
    uri: <%= ENV['MONGOHQ_URL'] %>

development:
  <<: *defaults

test: &testing
  <<: *defaults
  secret_token: <%= "banana" * 5 %>
  mongodb:
    database: myapp_test

cucumber:
  <<: *testing

The ".local" file can contain overrides for your development environment:

# settings.local.yml
development:
  mongodb:
    database: myapp_dev

Finally, the config keys can be read in your app as such:

Rails.configuration.heroku              #=> false
Rails.configuration.mongodb.database    #=> "myapp_dev"