Fiona - Rails 3 configuration data engine.

Fiona lets you store unstructured configuration data in your SQL database. Examples include application settings and template data. Any JSON compatible datastructures and values are permitted (integer, float, string, hash, array, true, false, null, etc).

Requirements

Activerecord (tested with Rails 3.1)

Gem Installation

With bundler

Add the following to your Gemfile and run the 'bundle' command to update your Gemfile.lock:

gem "fiona"

Without bundler

gem install "fiona"

configuration

After you install the gem, you need to generate Fiona's migration:

rails generate fiona

This should create a migration named create_fiona_tables.rb in your Rails project.

Usage

Fiona has uses two models (Template and TemplateAttribute). Template is an STI table so it is recommended that you subclass it as necessary.

Example app/models/setting_template.rb:

class SettingTemplate < Template
end

Create a template for application settings:

settings = SettingTemplate.new
settings.key = 'my_settings'
settings.app_name = 'My cool app'
settings.domain_name = 'somedomain.com'
settings.email_addresses = {:support => '[email protected]', :sales => '[email protected]'}
settings.save!

Create a convenient constant for accessing your settings (config/initializers/fiona.rb):

SETTINGS = SettingTemplate.find_by_key('my_settings')

You can now access your settings at any time:

puts SETTINGS.domain_name

You can change your settings easily whenever you want:

SETTINGS.whatever = 5
SETTINGS.save!

Note: you will need to restart your Rails processes whenever settings change in order for all processes to see the changes.

TODO

Create a generator for creating subclasses of Template.
Keep projects clean by storing all template subclasses in app/templates instead of the models directory.
Create a singleton for simplifying template access.
Improve caching.

Contributing to fiona

Check out the latest master to make sure the feature hasn't been implemented or the bug hasn't been fixed yet
Check out the issue tracker to make sure someone already hasn't requested it and/or contributed it
Fork the project
Start a feature/bugfix branch
Commit and push until you are happy with your contribution
Make sure to add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
Please try not to mess with the Rakefile, version, or history. If you want to have your own version, or is otherwise necessary, that is fine, but please isolate to its own commit so I can cherry-pick around it.