Creating a model that acts as a settings manager

Rails
1

Hi,

I was wondering how could you create a model that is tied to all the
records in one table, and retrieves the values of all records on first
load, and also handles the updating of its values.

For example, suppose I have this table:

id INT(11) PK
group CHAR(40)
name CHAR(40)
value CHAR(128)
updated_at DATETIME

Sample rows:
group name value

main something 123
users expire 45

Then, I’d like very much to do something like this in Rails:

Settings.main.something = 34
a = Settings.users.expire

And also being able to override default behaviors, because maybe I’d
want to do something special each time a specific setting is changed.

Currently, I’m just defining a method for each setting, but I keep
thinking there must be a better way.

Thanks in advance!

  • Ivan V.
2

i might suggest using the magic ‘type’ column instead of group

id int PK
name varchar(40)
type varchar(40) #magic column
value varchar(40)

class Setting < AR::Base
end

class MainSetting < Setting
end

class UserSetting < Setting
end

class SomeOtherSetting < Setting
end

and so on for all your setting types

a = MainSetting.create(:name => “something”, “value” => “34”)
b = UserSetting.find_by_name(“expire”) # a.value = 45

I’m not saying what you want to do can or cannot be done, I just think
it
would be more work than just doing it the ‘Rails Way’

Chris

3

Thanks for your insight, I think I’ll go with it.

Ivan V.