Question

My question is seemingly simple but has been pretty elusive. I want one value that can be called anywhere in the application – it’s a minimum value we are using for validations in the model, we want to inform the user of that value, etc.

So far, I have done the following:

In config/initializers, I created a new .rb file (under suggestion I found on another thread):

minimum = 15

and only got that it couldn’t be found after starting rails server.

I found a strange suggestion to put the value in en.yml as minimum: 15, same issue as above.

Obviously, application helper and controller won’t help as I need the value in my models. I did however find one solution, which was to put it in the class Application in config/application.rb:

config.after_initialize do
    ::Minimum = 15
end

and afterwards call it like this:

MyApp::Application::Minimum

Obviously, this solution, while it does work, isn’t ideal. If I could find a way to alias MyApp::Application::Minimum as just “minimum”, I’ll be completely satisfied, but getting it done in the initializers is, from what I’ve heard, a better solution.

Answer 1

You can stick something in a model if you want and call it from anywhere:

Couriers = %w[TNT UPS RoyalMail Bike Hand Pigeon Other]

But I prefer putting them in a yaml file.

Create a config.yml file in your configs directory and put your vars in there:

defaults: &defaults

   node_1: '10.8'
   node_2: '10.9'
   node_3: '10.0'

   whatever: 1
   thereis: 2

development:
  <<: *defaults

playground:
  <<: *defaults

production:
  <<: *defaults

poststaging:
  <<: *defaults

test:
  <<: *defaults

Load the config file using something like this in your initializers directory. Create a file in /config/initializers called ‘load_vars.rb’ and put the following in there:

SETTINGS = YAML.load_file("#{Rails.root}/config/config.yml")[Rails.env]

You’ll have to restart your server after changing these though.

— EDIT —

To use these variables, you can load with something like this from your model, controller, views:

SETTINGS['var_1']