Figaro

Simple Rails app configuration

What is this for?

Figaro is for configuring Rails 3 apps, especially open source Rails apps.

Open sourcing a Rails app can be a little tricky when it comes to sensitive configuration information like Pusher or Stripe credentials. You don't want to check private credentials into the repo but what other choice is there?

Figaro provides a clean and simple way to configure your app and keep the private stuff… private.

How does it work?

It works really well.

There are a few similar solutions out there, and a lot of homegrown attempts. Most namespace your configuration under a Config (or similar) namespace. That's fine, but there's already a place to describe the application environment… ENV!

ENV is a collection of simple string key/value pairs and it works just great for application configuration.

As an added bonus, this is exactly how apps on Heroku are configured. So if you configure your Rails app using ENV, you're already set to deploy to Heroku.

Give me an example.

Okay. Add Figaro to your bundle:

gem "figaro"

Next up, install Figaro:

rails generate figaro:install

This generates a commented config/application.yml file and ignores it in your .gitignore. Add your own configuration to this file and you're done!

Your configuration will be available as key/value pairs in ENV. For example, here's config/initializers/pusher.rb:

Pusher.app_id = ENV["PUSHER_APP_ID"]
Pusher.key    = ENV["PUSHER_KEY"]
Pusher.secret = ENV["PUSHER_SECRET"]

If your app requires Rails-environment-specific configuration, you can also namespace your configuration under a key for Rails.env.

HELLO: world
development:
  HELLO: developers
production:
  HELLO: users

In this case, ENV["HELLO"] will produce "developers" in development, "users" in production and "world" otherwise.

How does it work with Heroku?

Heroku's beautifully simple application configuration was the inspiration for Figaro.

Typically, to configure your application ENV on Heroku, you would do the following from the command line using the heroku gem:

heroku config:add PUSHER_APP_ID=8926
heroku config:add PUSHER_KEY=0463644d89a340ff1132
heroku config:add PUSHER_SECRET=0eadfd9847769f94367b
heroku config:add STRIPE_API_KEY=jHXKPPE0dUW84xJNYzn6CdWM2JfrCbPE
heroku config:add STRIPE_PUBLIC_KEY=pk_HHtUKJwlN7USCT6nE5jiXgoduiNl3

But Figaro provides a rake task to do just that! Just run:

rake figaro:heroku

Optionally, you can pass in the name of the Heroku app:

rake figaro:heroku[my-awesome-app]

What if I'm not using Heroku?

No problem. Just add config/application.yml to your production app on the server.

This sucks. How can I make it better?

1. Fork it.
2. Make it better.
3. Send me a pull request.

Does Figaro have a mascot?

Yes.

[](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Figaro_(Disney\))