Ruby on Rails: Where to define global constants?

Question

I\'m just getting started with my first Ruby on Rails webapp. I\'ve got a bunch of different models, views, controllers, and so on.

I\'m wanting to find a good plac

Answer 1

For application-wide settings and for global constants I recommend to use Settingslogic. This settings are stored in YML file and can be accessed from models, views and controllers. Furthermore, you can create different settings for all your environments:

  # app/config/application.yml
  defaults: &defaults
    cool:
      sweet: nested settings
    neat_setting: 24
    awesome_setting: <%= "Did you know 5 + 5 = #{5 + 5}?" %>

    colors: "white blue black red green"

  development:
    <<: *defaults
    neat_setting: 800

  test:
    <<: *defaults

  production:
    <<: *defaults

Somewhere in the view (I prefer helper methods for such kind of stuff) or in a model you can get, for ex., array of colors Settings.colors.split(/\s/). It's very flexible. And you don't need to invent a bike.