Question

I just discovered the rails-settings gem and now I need to make an admin page that lets me edit the setting values. How would I make a settings controller with an edit view that can change these dynamic app wide settings?

Answer 1

I haven’t used this gem but it seems like it should be fairly straight forward. Since it uses a database backed model, you would simply create a controller as normal:

rails g controller Settings

From here you would define your index action to gather all your individual settings for display in the view:

def index
  @settings = Settings.all
end

Then in the view you can setup a loop to display them:

<% @settings.each do |setting| %>
  <%= setting.var %> = <%= setting.value %>
<% end %>

As far as editing … this might be a bit tricky since by default rails would expect you to submit only one setting at a time to edit. You could do it this way but unless you implement the edit with ajax it might be tedious and non-intuitive.

Another way would be to set up your update method to accept all the individual settings at once, loop through and update each one with new values. It might look something like this:

// The /settings route would need to be setup manually since it is without an id (the default)
<%= form_tag("/settings", :method => "put") do %>
  <% @settings.each do |setting| %>
    <%= label_tag(setting.var, setting.var) %>
    <%= text_field_tag(setting.var, :value => setting.value) %>
  <% end %>
  <%= submit_tag("Save Changes") %>
<% end %>

This should output all of the settings (given they have been assigned to the @settings variable) with the var name as the label and the current value as the text field value. Assuming that the routing is setup, when you submit this form the action that receives it should all the new settings in the params variable. Then you can do something like this in the action:

def update
  params.each_pair do |setting, value|
    eval("Settings.#{setting} = #{value}")
  end
  redirect_to settings_path, :notice => 'Settings updated' # Redirect to the settings index
end

This may not be the best way depending on how often you edit the settings and how many settings you have…but this is a possible solution.