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

I typically have a 'lookup' model/table in my rails program and use it for the constants. It is very useful if the constants are going to be different for different environments. In addition, if you have a plan to extend them, say you want to add 'yellow' on a later date, you could simply add a new row to the lookup table and be done with it.

If you give the admin permissions to modify this table, they will not come to you for maintenance. :) DRY.

Here is how my migration code looks like:

class CreateLookups < ActiveRecord::Migration
  def change
    create_table :lookups do |t|
      t.string :group_key
      t.string :lookup_key
      t.string :lookup_value
      t.timestamps
    end
  end
end

I use seeds.rb to pre-populate it.

Lookup.find_or_create_by_group_key_and_lookup_key_and_lookup_value!(group_key: 'development_COLORS', lookup_key: 'color1', lookup_value: 'red');