where do I store static information in rails application?

Question

This is a question about structure of a model and where to put static information. I've got a model Membership and the membership model has 7 entries describing unique features among various Memberships. The information is populated by seeds.rb . However, some attributes like click_value are the same across all memberships.

Would I be better off seeding this information and storing it and duplicating it across 7 entries in the database? Or is it better to write a method within the model like the following?

class Membership < ActiveRecord::Base
  def click_value
    return 0.001
  end
end

Is it a matter of personal preference? Is one way better than the other? Just looking for some guidance on structure.

Answer 1

This is mostly a personal preference in my opinion, but I see a benefit in storing it in the database together with other data for the sake of consistency. What if the click_value will eventually change across membership types? In general, an extra float column in the database wouldn't cause significant overhead, would make sure that your data model is consistent, and be future-proof. Writing a method that returns a constant is not a crime, but I wouldn't prefer it over storing the value in the database.