= ConfigNewton

A common pattern for Ruby libraries is to have some kind of configuration that can be set at the library level. ConfigNewton is a simple library that provides a user-friendly way to expose that configuration.

== Installation

gem install config_newton

== Usage

require 'config_newton'

# The library author sets it up like this:

module MyLibrary
  include ConfigNewton

  configurable do
    property :email
    property :special_sauce, :default => true
  end
end

# And the end user can set it like this:

MyLibrary.configure do |config|
  config.email = '[email protected]'
  config.special_sauce = false
end

# And the library author can use it like this:

module MyLibrary
  class Client
    # ... somewhere in the code ...
    MyLibrary.config.email # => '[email protected]'
  end
end

== Other Useful Bits

There are a few other useful features of ConfigNewton. For instance, you can convert the configuration to a hash at any time, or just access it like one:

MyLibrary.config.to_hash # => {:email => '[email protected]', :special_sauce => false}
MyLibrary.config[:special_sauce] # => false

You can also load user settings from a YAML file quite easily. Let's say you're developing a Rails plugin. You can easily load a config directory YAML file like this:

MyLibrary.config.load_from("#{Rails.root}/config/my_library.yml", Rails.env)

The second argument specified is the "root key" for the configuration, allowing you to easily specify environments or other conditions. Using our examples above the user would create a YAML file in config/my_library.yml and populate it like this:

development:
  email: [email protected]
  special_sauce: false

production:
  email: [email protected]
  special_sauce: true

The second argument may be omitted in which case the file should look like:

email: [email protected]
special_sauce: true

== Roadmap

There's still further I'd like to take this library, here are a few thoughts:

Hierarchical Configuration :: Create multi-level configurations that retain an intuitive interface both for the library developer and the user. Typed Configurations :: Implement a simple casting system to automatically convert values into desired types.

== Note on Patches/Pull Requests

• Fork the project.
• Make your feature addition or bug fix.
• Add tests for it. This is important so I don't break it in a future version unintentionally.
• Commit, do not mess with rakefile, version, or history. (if you want to have your own version, that is fine but bump version in a commit by itself I can ignore when I pull)
• Send me a pull request. Bonus points for topic branches.

== Copyright

Copyright (c) 2010 Intridea, Inc. and Michael Bleigh. See LICENSE for details.