Question

Background

I’m writing a photo gallery, the gallery can create both previews and thumbnails.

I want the user to customize the creation of these (resolution etc)

What I have so far

• config/gallery.yml – Stores the actual settings, a block for each env
• config/initializers/gallery.rb – Loads the YAML file into Gallery::Application
• app/models/image.rb – The model that reads the configuration and creates the images

My question

Where is the best place to merge the settings with the default values?
I could either do it in gallery.rb or image.rb where it’s actually used.

Otherwise, is this a sane approach or have I gone about this all wrong?
Any feedback is greatly appreciated.

Files

config/initializers/gallery.yml

production:
  create_previews: true
  create_thumbnails: true

development:
  create_thumbnails: true
  create_previews: true

test:
  create_thumbnails: false
  create_previews: false

config/initializers/gallery.rb

Gallery::Application.config.image_directory = File.join(Rails.root, 'images')
Gallery::Application.config.thumbnail_directory = File.join(Rails.root, 'thumbnails')
Gallery::Application.config.preview_directory = File.join(Rails.root, 'previews')

# DO NOT MODIFY THE LINES BELOW

EXTERNAL_CONFIG_FILE_PATH = "#{Rails.root}/config/gallery.yml"

if FileTest.exists? EXTERNAL_CONFIG_FILE_PATH
  vals = YAML.load_file(EXTERNAL_CONFIG_FILE_PATH)[::Rails.env]
else
  vals = {}
end

Gallery::Application.config.create_previews = vals['create_previews']
Gallery::Application.config.preview_settings = vals['preview_settings']

Gallery::Application.config.create_thumbnails = vals['create_thumbnails']
Gallery::Application.config.thumbnail_settings = vals['thumbnail_settings']

Answer 1

I also agree this is good place in config/initializers.
but other place and way is read/write database table field in GalleryConfig ActiveRecord model using MySQL.
because easy for testcase or rails console.