It's common knowledge that you should avoid duplicated code. The same goes for configuration. Catalyst keeps its configuration files in the Apps directory. e.g. if your apps name is MyApp the config file is named maypp.conf. Catalyst::Plugin::ConfigLoader also loads myapp_local.conf if present. You can change the file format if you want, I prefer myapp.pl You can also change the the '_local' suffix via ENV variables. (e.g. CATALYST_CONFIG_LOCAL_SUFFIX=testing to have myapp_testing.conf loaded)

Quite often you have scripts or other parts in a project that need configuration aswell. I consider using the same config file for all project related stuff a good practise and Config::ZOMG helps with that.

    package MyApp::Config;
    use Moose;
    use Config::ZOMG;
    has config => (
        is   => 'ro',
        isa  => 'Config::ZOMG',
        lazy => 1,
        default => sub {
            my ($self) = @_;
            my $config = Config::ZOMG->new(
                name => 'mox',
                path => 'config/',
            );
            $config->load; # for ->found to work
            print "Loading config file '$_'\n" for $config->found;
            return $config;
        },
    );
    sub as_hash {
        my ($self) = @_;
        return $self->config->load;
    }
    __PACKAGE__->meta->make_immutable;
    1;

If I write a helper script I use it like this:

    #!/usr/bin/env perl
    use strict;
    use warnings;
    use FindBin qw/$Bin/;
    use lib "$Bin/../lib";
    use MyApp::Config;
    my $config = MyApp::Config->new->as_hash;
    my foobar = $config->{foobar};

David Schmidt davewood@cpan.org