title: Best way to share ActiveRecord models and data between different Rails Apps?
body: <p>I have several rails applications that will use the same core set of Models and data, for example:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Apps</li>
  <li>Developers</li>
  <li>Categories</li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>Each app builds on top of this core data and uses it in different ways. For example, I might have something like this in another app:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li><strong>Activity</strong></li>
  <li><strong>Users</strong></li>
  <li><em>Apps (shared)</em></li>
  <li><em>Developers (shared)</em></li>
  <li><em>Categories (shared)</em></li>
  </ul>
  
  <p>What is the best way to share the Models <strong>and</strong> data between them? The Apps, Developers and Category data will all be the same for every app so I would rather not have to duplicate the data in every app's database.</p>
  
  <p><strong>EDIT:</strong> I'm thinking through a couple of possible solutions:</p>
  
  <ul>
  <li>Rails engines (would solve the duplicate Models in different apps problem, but not the shared data issue)</li>
  <li>Using ActiveResource to access the core data (solves the shared data, but not the shared model issue)</li>
  </ul>