== Summary
Application level configuration.

== Features

 * simple YAML config files
 * config files support ERB
 * config files support inheritance
 * access config information via convenient object member notation

=== Basic Usage

You simply write a configuration file in YAML.  Notice you can use ERB.

<em>config.yml</em>
  aws:
    access_key: 123ABC
    secret_key: ABC123
  now: <%= Time.now %>
  servers: [ {name: example1.com}, {name: example2.com} ]

Then somewhere in your code, you create a global constant from the config file.  Then access the config data via object member notation.

_code_
  ::AppConfig = ApplicationConfiguration.new("config.yml")
  AppConfig.aws.access_key  # => "123ABC"
  AppConfig.aws.secret_key  # => "ABC123"
  AppConfig.now             # => Tue May 05 21:55:15 -0500 2009
  AppConfig.servers[0].name # => "example1.com"

=== Inheritance

You can have a second config file that is recursively merged with the first config file.

<em>base.yml</em>
  app_name:  MyCoolApp
  domain:  dev.mycoolapp.com

<em>production.yml</em>
  domain:  www.mycoolapp.com

_code_
  ::AppConfig = ApplicationConfiguration.new("base.yml", "production.yml")
  AppConfig.app_name # => "MyCoolApp"
  AppConfig.domain   # => "www.mycoolapp.com"

=== Using in a Rails app

You just need to create an initializer that looks something like this.

 require 'app_config'
 ::AppConfig = ApplicationConfiguration.new(RAILS_ROOT+"/config/app_config.yml",
                                            RAILS_ROOT+"/config/environments/#{RAILS_ENV}.yml")

If you installed this as a Rails plugin instead of a gem, that code is already run for you in
the plugin's init.rb.

=== Environments

Alternatively to splitting out your environments into separate files, you can just have a single file which defines
the application configuration for all environments (much like how databases.yml works).  Note if you do this, nested
configurations will not be recursively merged.  See example below.

<em>app_config.yml</em>
  defaults: &defaults
    one: won
    two: too
    nested:
      foo: foo
      bar: bar
  
  development:
    <<: *defaults
    two: new
    nested:
      foo: bar

_code_
  RAILS_ENV # => "development"
  ::AppConfig = ApplicationConfiguration.new("app_config.yml")
  AppConfig.use_environment!(RAILS_ENV)
  AppConfig.one # => "won"
  AppConfig.two # => "new"
  AppConfig.nested.foo # => "bar"
  AppConfig.nested.bar # raises NoMethodError because nested configurations are not recursively merged


== Author
Christopher J. Bottaro