How to DRY Sass code using variables? - ruby-on-rails

Question

I have a design that uses colors to identify sections of the site. I have put a file with the color variables defined, since they can change and it is difficult to track them down through the CSS files.
$people: #D50000;
$galleries: #D500AA;
$projects: #D5BA00;
//etc...
The name of my classes matches those of the variables. For example, the navigation menu is something like:
<ul>
<li class="people">People</div>
<li class="galleries">Galleries</div>
<li class="projects">Projects</div>
<!-- etc... ->
</ul>
and I find myself writing SASS like
#nav {
ul {
li.people { border-left: 5px solid $people; }
li.galleries { border-left: 5px solid $galleries; }
li.projects { border-left: 5px solid $projects; }
}
}
which I'd like to DRY up. I have tried to use mixins, but I don't know how to tell SASS to lookup a variable named after the argument I pass (variable indirection). I have something like:
#mixin menu-states($resource) {
li.#{$resource} a { // This works
border-left: 7px solid $#{$resource}; // But this doesn't...
}
}
Does anybody have a suggestion on how to DRY this? Thanks.

Answer 1

this code works for me
#mixin test($resource: "red"){
$updated: unquote($resource);
li.#{$updated} a{
border-left: 7px solid $updated;
}
}

Answer 2

You cant do that, however you can pass in 2 variables, one for the class and another for the color to the mixin.