real nice framework you got here

Here’s a good one I ran into in Rails the other day.

So the files under the config/environments directory are environment specific config files.

config/environment.rb on the other hand is loaded and executed for every environment.

What I wanted was a constant that was the same in the development and production environments but different in the test environment. So I naturally put the test environment specific value in

CSV_DIRECTORY = File.join RAILS_ROOT, 'test', 'csv'

And instead of putting the development and production specific value in their specific config files I put it in:

CSV_DIRECTORY = File.join RAILS_ROOT, 'lib', 'csv'

That way its only in one place.

CSV_DIRECTORY => '/path/to/my/app/test/csv'

CSV_DIRECTORY => '/path/to/my/app/lib/csv'

What’s going on here?

You’re telling me the generic environment config file gets executed after the environment specific config file?

It turns out half of it does. Everything above the following code gets executed before the current environment’s specific config file:

1
2
3

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  # whole bunch of Rails config code
end

So if i defined my constant before that I’d be fine:

1
2
3
4
5

CSV_DIRECTORY = File.join RAILS_ROOT, 'lib', 'csv'

Rails::Initializer.run do |config|
  # whole bunch of Rails config code
end

That’s terrible.

I also like the fact that further down config/environment.rb after the call to Rails::Initializer#run there’s the following comment:

# Include your application configuration below

I’m going to go use a real man’s framework