ruby script/plugin install http://github.com/brennandunn/configurator/tree/master

Basics
=========
Now you can do things like:

  @user.config[:receive_email_alerts?] = true

or

  @user.config[:notification_address] = 'user@gmail.com'

You can set configurations to either instances or classes. Setting key/value pairs to classes is especially useful for setting up application-wide settings.

Think of it as just a giant hash.

  @user.config = { :favorite_animal => 'dog', :favorite_color => 'blue' }

Namespaces
=============
Support for one level of namespacing:

  @user.config[:animals, :favorite] = 'cat'

Namespaces within hash assignments:

  @user.config = { :animals => { :favorite => 'cat', :likes_elephants? => true }, :artists => { :favorite => 'Radiohead' } }

Querying namespaces:

  @user.config = { :animals => { :cat => 'Toby', :dog => 'Gabby' } }
  @user.config.namespace(:animals)  # => { :cat => 'Toby', :dog => 'Gabby' }

Form support
===============
Easy to use in views:

  <% fields_for :config, @user.config do |c| %>
    <%= c.select :favorite_color, %w(red green blue) %>
  <% end %>

Default Options
===============
Databases don’t come filled, so there’s an easy way to set defaults on your models.

  class User < ActiveRecord::Base
    include Configurator

    default_configuration :favorite_color => 'red', :receive_email_alerts? => true, :salary => { :default_for_manager => '$55,000', :default_for_employee => '$25,000' }
  end

  @user.config[:favorite_color] # => 'red'
  @user.config[:favorite_color] = 'green'
  @user.config[:favorite_color] # => 'green'

Global Settings
==============
Sometimes you don’t want to be restricted to configuring records, and would like to apply Configurator to a class or to something even more global. Well, now you can.

Per Model
=============

  User.config[:notification_email] = 'Welcome new user!'

Globally
============

  Configurator[:default_notification_email] = 'Welcome to our website!'

Example of a database driven view layer:

  < h1><%= Configurator[:login_page, :headline] %>< /h1>

  < p><%= Configurator[:login_page, :username] %>< /p>
  <%= text_field_tag :username %>

  < p><%= Configurator[:login_page, :password] %>< /p>
  ...

Simply store the above values, and you’re now able to quickly attach a form to those different values, and satisfy your clients need to have every single aspect of the application. I’m sure there are plugins that do just this, but this is an example of Configurators global reach.

Setup
============
To setup, you really just need to create the config table:

  class AddConfigTable < ActiveRecord::Migration
    def self.up
      create_table :config do |t|

        t.references    :associated, :polymorphic => true

        t.string        :namespace
        t.string        :key,         :limit => 40,     :null => false
        t.string        :value

      end
    end

    def self.down
      drop_table :config
    end
  end

Include Configurator into the models you need it in, and that’s it.

If you need to be able to store complex objects, or strings greater than 255 characters, change the ‘value’ column to text. You can add to the ConfigurationHash class:

  serialize :value

I haven’t tried this yet, but it should work fine.

There is currently no advanced documentation for this plugin.