javascript - Accessing app settings in Express 3 controllers

Question

I'm curious what people use for accessing Express 3 settings (from get/set) in controllers and models. I know that I can access it through the request but I am not sure what the best approach is to access it outside of the routes such as in a model. I currently use a combination of app.set and app.get as well as a static array called settings that I require here:

Here's what I have right now:

// conf/configuration.js
var settings;

module.exports = function(app, express) {
  app.set("root_dir", process.cwd() + "/");
  app.set("public_dir", process.cwd() + "/public");
  ...
};

settings = {
  foo: bar,
  ...

};

module.exports.settings = settings;

and in models I do

var settings = require("../conf/configuration").settings;

But I would like to do away with that settings array as I find the 2 methods a bit messy. Recommendation on how to access say 'root_dir' in a misc file?