stephencelis

I’ve been rolling my own app configs for awhile now. It’s been just another step in the rails newapp ritual. A chore, really. Rails templates make things a bit easier, but the logic shouldn’t untidy my lib and initializers, should it?

I know it’s been done before, and others will do it again, but I just had to TODO its release when, last month, I heard Jacques Crocker blithely gloat that his take on AppConfig is better than everyone else’s.

Au contraire, mon amie! Let me introduce my way: the way I rather like it.

Hello, App

App is yet another YAML-based, app config for Rails. App should look familiar enough. It looks for and loads from config/app.yml, and provides namespaced access:

App.config # => {"apis"=>{"flickr"=>{ ... }}

# Sugar is always sweeter:
App.config("apis", "flickr") # => App.config["apis"]["flickr"]

# Who doesn't like sugar?
App["apis", "flickr"]

# Sugar, sugar, sugar!
App.apis("flickr")

# Namespace again, if necessary, e.g., with "config/app/apis.yml":
App::Apis.flickr

So, how does App stand up against the self-proclaimed champ? Well, it’s

• ⅓ the size of AppConfig, so save yourself those last six keystrokes. It also starts you out with just one file: app.yml (no environmental waste!). (The code base? Yes, it’s slimmer, too.)
• Less magical [pej.] on the surface. Method chaining should really only go so far, so we prefer App.apis("twitter") to the OpenStruct choo-choo that is AppConfig.apis.twitter.
• More modular (when we want it to be). If your configuration starts to outgrow itself, branch it out.

So what’s the easiest way to get started? Using this template:

You can also install App as a plugin, or maintain its gem installation yourself: just take a look at the README on GitHub.