Application-wide global variable that can be get and set from controllers in Rails

Question

I'm a new ruby-on-rails developer and I'm stuck building out a function I need.

I have a product feed on a Rails website. I want to make an admin console function where the admin can change the mode of how the product feed will behave for ALL users.

I need a variable that is application-wide, initialized at the start of the server, but can be toggled when ever the controller button is selected.

I tried implementing a cache solution, setting variables in application.rb, and a few other techniques but haven't managed to get anything working.

Looking for some insight into how to make a writable, global variable for a rails site!

Thank you

Answer 1

Since you are working stateless, but you want to this "global" to persist across all your Rails's servers, you will need to go do the DB for the persistence:

class ProductFeed < ActiveRecord::Base
  validates_presence_of :toggle
end

class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
  before_filter -> {
    @product_feed = ProductFeed.last
  }
end