This extension is part of the Sinatra::Contrib project. Run gem install sinatra-contrib to have it available.

Sinatra::ConfigFile

Sinatra::ConfigFile is an extension that allows you to load the application’s configuration from YAML files. It automatically detects if the files contain specific environment settings and it will use those corresponding to the current one.

You can access those options through settings within the application. If you try to get the value for a setting that hasn’t been defined in the config file for the current environment, you will get whatever it was set to in the application.

Usage

Once you have written your configurations to a YAML file you can tell the extension to load them. See below for more information about how these files are interpreted.

For the examples, lets assume the following config.yml file:

greeting: Welcome to my file configurable application

Classic Application

require "sinatra"
require "sinatra/config_file"

config_file 'path/to/config.yml'

get '/' do
  @greeting = settings.greeting
  haml :index
end

# The rest of your classic application code goes here...

Modular Application

require "sinatra/base"
require "sinatra/config_file"

class MyApp < Sinatra::Base
  register Sinatra::ConfigFile

  config_file 'path/to/config.yml'

  get '/' do
    @greeting = settings.greeting
    haml :index
  end

  # The rest of your modular application code goes here...
end

Config File Format

In its most simple form this file is just a key-value list:

foo: bar
something: 42
nested:
  a: 1
  b: 2

But it also can provide specific environment configuration. There are two ways to do that: at the file level and at the settings level.

At the settings level (e.g. in ‘path/to/config.yml’):

development:
  foo: development
  bar: bar
test:
  foo: test
  bar: bar
production:
  foo: production
  bar: bar

Or at the file level:

foo:
  development: development
  test: test
  production: production
bar: bar

In either case, settings.foo will return the environment name, and settings.bar will return "bar".

If you wish to provide defaults that may be shared among all the environments, this can be done by using a YAML alias, and then overwriting values in environments where appropriate:

default: &common_settings
  foo: 'foo'
  bar: 'bar'

production:
  <<: *common_settings
  bar: 'baz' # override the default value