Rack::Environmental

Description

Never again will you accidentally delete production data! Rack::Environmental adds an indicator badge to your web application so that you can tell whether you’re working with the staging, test, development or production version of your web app.

Usage

This Rack middleware can be used with any Rack application, but here’s how you would use it in Rails. Put the following in config/environment.rb:

config.middleware.use Rack::Environmental,
                        :staging =>     { :url => /^staging.+$/   },
                        :test =>        { :url => /^test.+$/      },
                        :development => { :url => /^localhost.+$/ }

When a request comes to your web app, Rack::Environmental compares the URL to the supplied regular expressions. If the URL matches, the name of the environment is displayed at the top of the web page.

Each environment can be further configured:

config.middleware.use Rack::Environmental,
                        :staging =>     { :url => /^staging.+$/,
                                          :color => "yellow",
                                          :size => :large          },
                        :test =>        { :url => /^test.+$/,
                                          :color => "purple",
                                          :style => :badge         },
                        :development => { :url => /^localhost.+$/,
                                          :color => "orange"       }

Here’s the full list of configuration options:

:url        => a regular expression
:style      => either :badge (a transparent, floating badge) or :banner (default)
:color      => a string that represents a CSS color, such as "red", "rgb(6,70,14)", or "#8e6630"
:size       => :small, :medium, or :large; defaults to :medium
:opacity    => a number from 0 (completely transparent) to 1; only works with the badge style
:top        => distance in pixels from the top; only works with the badge style
:left       => distance in pixels from the left; only works with the badge style
:background => true or false; when true, the body's background color is changed