Environment variables locally and Heroku

Update:

I now use the dotenv gem instead of the example below. So instead of ignoring the env.rb file, I now ignore the .env file with Git.

Original post:

Try this,

# /env.rbENV['aws_bucket'] = 'my_bucket'ENV['aws_access_key'] = 'my_access_key'ENV['aws_access_secret'] = 'my_access_secret'

This file sets the same ENV values as heroku config would do.

# /config.rbrequire './env' if File.exists?('env.rb')

The env.rb will only get required if it exists.

# /.gitignore/env.rb

The env.rb has been added to the .gitignore file so it isn't kept in Git.

You would then access the values using ENV['key'] instead of config['key'].

You might need to change the path to the env.rb if it's not in the same directory as the config.rb file.

EDIT:

From looking at your Rakefile in the previous question, you need to change it to this:

# Rakefilerequire 'bundler/setup'Bundler.require(:default)require './env' if File.exists?('env.rb')AssetSync.configure do |con| con.fog_provider = 'AWS' con.fog_region = 'eu-west-1' con.fog_directory = ENV['aws_bucket'] con.aws_access_key_id = ENV['aws_access_key'] con.aws_secret_access_key = ENV['aws_access_secret'] con.prefix = "assets" con.public_path = Pathname("./public")endnamespace :assets do  desc "Precompile assets"  task :precompile do    AssetSync.sync  endend

I've assumed that the only method in /config/config.rb was the config method so I've removed the,

require './config/config.rb'include MyConfig

And swapped the config[key] for the ENV[key] values defined in env.rb. You may need to change the key names to match up.

You could delete the yaml, and describe the environment variables in a .env file then start your app with foreman start. See https://devcenter.heroku.com/articles/config-vars#local-setup

Or keep your hybrid system, where you load a yaml in dev, and use environment variables on heroku.

I do something similar to Sam's suggestion, but a little bit different. I have a YAML config file too, but I wrap the reading of it in a Rake task, which then runs the app.

# in the Rakefilerequire 'yaml'def set_connstring  s = %Q!postgres://#{ENV["DB_APP"]}@localhost/#{ENV["DB_APP"]}!  ENV['DATABASE_URL'] ||= ENV["RACK_ENV"] == "test" ? "#{s}.test" : senddef basic_environment  warn "  Setting up environment..."  file = File.expand_path( File.join File.dirname(__FILE__), "./config.yml" )  if File.exist? file    YAML.load_file(file).each do |k,v|      warn "-> #{k}"      ENV[k.upcase] = v    end  end  set_connstring()endnamespace :app do  desc "Set up the environment locally"  task :environment do    basic_environment()  end  desc "Run the app locally"  task :run_local => "app:environment" do    exec "bin/rackup config.ru -p #{ENV['RUN_LOCAL_PORT']}"  endend

It means I can run it locally without any code inside the app to deal with this.

Edit: a quick aside, I notice you have Bundler.require(:default) in your Rakefile. If you use bundle install --binstubs then Bundler installs all executables into a dir named "bin/" within the project. Then, if you run any of those executables they automatically use the libraries installed by Bundler, no need to require via Bundler. See http://gembundler.com/v1.2/man/bundle-exec.1.html.