Nifty Settings

A nifty way to save and access application-wide settings. Great for managing different configurations for different Rails/Rack environments.

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'nifty_settings'

• 2.0
• 2.1
• 2.2

Let's say we have the following settings file:

default:
  some_service:
    use_live?: false

development:
  foo: bar_dev
  wibble:
    wobble: wubble
  some_collection:
    - first
    - second

test:
  foo: bar_test

production:
  foo: bar
  some_service:
    use_live?: true
    key: my_secret_key
    timeout: 20

We can access the settings by using Settings.key_name. A combination of default values and environment specific settings can be used. NiftySettings will use the correct setting based on your current environment.

Let's use the above settings in a development environment:

=> Settings.foo
"bar_dev"
=> Settings.some_collection
["first", "second"]

Settings can be nested:

=> Settings.wibble.wobble
"wubble"

If a setting isn't defined for the current environment, it will fall back to the default value:

=> Settings.some_service.use_live?
false

And if the setting doesn't exist at all, it just returns nil:

=> Settings.fizzbuzz
nil

Using the same settings in a production environment, it picks up the environment specific settings:

=> Settings.foo
"bar"
=> Settings.some_service.use_live?
true
=> Settings.some_service.timeout
20

NiftySettings loads settings from a default file (config/settings.yml) and all YAML files in a default folder (config/settings/*.yml). This allows you to put simple settings in the default file but group related settings in dedicated files in the default folder.

Both locations can be customized:

NiftySettings.configuration.settings_file = '/home/shared/other_settings.yml'
NiftySettings.configuration.settings_folder = Rails.root.join('config', 'my_settings')

During initialization, NiftySettings checks if there already is a Settings module. If it finds one (e.g. if you have a Rails model called Settings), NiftySettings doesn't touch it and your settings are available as NiftySettings::Settings in your application. If a Settings module is not found, NiftySettings uses it and you can access your Settings as Settings.

If you like this project, consider buying me a coffee! :)