flags

A simple feature flagging library.

100 lines of code, no dependencies. Written in ES6+.

flags lets you quickly switch features on or off based on a context. This is useful to test features for specific users (such as flagging on new functionality in a web application by reading the response context), dark-launching code, and a/b testing.

// Import it!
import Flags from '@r/flags';

// Set up your experiment config!
const config = {
  loggedoutSearch: { loggedin: false },
  oldDesign: false,
  newListingStyle: { users: ['ajacksified'] },
};

const feature = new Flags(config);

// Add rules!
feature.addRule('loggedin', function(val) { return this.loggedin === val; });
feature.addRule('users', function(names) { return names.includes(this.username); });

// Get whatever blob of data you'll use to determine your experiment truthiness
const userData = {
  loggedin: true,
  username: 'ajacksified',
};

// For ease of use, build a context-bound flags instance. (Alternatively, you
// could call `feature.on(rule, context)` instead.)
const featureContext = feature.withContext(userData);

// Build your UI with a Flags context bound to userdata!

// false (loggedin is true, but the config wants false)
if (featureContext.enabled('loggedoutSearch')) {
  searchControl = <LoggedOutSearch />;
  console.log('show the logged out search');
}

// false (the config says it's always false)
if (featureContext.enabled('oldDesign')) {
  layout = <OldLayout />;
}

// true (the username is in the users array)
if (featureContext.enabled('newListingStyle')) {
  listing = <Listing2 />;
}

// Get the list of enabled featues:
const enabled = featureContext.allEnabled();
// => ['newListingStyle'];


// Or disabled:
const disabled = featureContext.allDisabled();
// => ['loggedoutSearch', 'oldDesign'];

Rules and Configuration

flags configuration and rules are very simple:

• Define a name for your features; such as 'loggedoutSearch' or 'oldDesign' as above. These will be the basis if your config and your feature flags for later on.
• Define the rules upon which your feature will be on or off. Above, we implement a boolean check (shoes) and an array check (username).
• Check the flag - either by sending it in (feature.enabled('feature', { data } )) or by hanging on to a context-bound instance ( featureContext = feature.withContext({ data }); featureContext.enabled('feature'))

Of note: if a rule is defined in configuration but it is not implemented, it is assumed to be false.

Three special "pseudo-rules" implement boolean operators: and, or, and not, so that rules may stay simple and general and be combined in useful ways. For example:

const config = {
  friend: {
    and: [
      { or: [ { type: 'cyborg' }, { type: 'human' } ] },
      { not: { role: 'supervillain' } }
    ]
  }
};

You can also parse large objects to handle things such as environment variables. To do so, you should have configuration in the format feature_name. feature_ will be stripped from the key and lowercased:

import Flags from flags;

const config = Flags.parseConfig({
  something: 'wut',
  feature_flippers: { names: ['bob', 'jane'] }
});

// => { flippers: { names: ['bob', 'jane'] } };

You can supply your own function, too, and customize both key and value. In this example, we'll expect things to start with f_ instead of feature_.

import Flags from flags;

const config = Flags.parseConfig({
  something: 'wut',
  f_flippers: { names: ['bob', 'jane'] }
}, function(key, val) {
  if (key.indexOf('f_') === -1) { return; }
  return { key: key.slice(2), val: val };
});

// => { flippers: { names: ['bob', 'jane'] } };

You can also retrieve a list of all currently enabled or disabled rules for a given context by calling feature.allEnabled or feature.allDisabled. These can be called with a context passed in, or else will use a bound context.

Sometimes, for testing, it's nice to clone an instance that doesn't use the original rules and configuration by reference. You can call flagsinstance.clone() to return a new flags instance with shallow copies of the config, rules, and context.

Development

flags is an ES6 library. Take a look at the .babelrc file to see what presets we're using. To import it in ES5, use var Flags = require ('@r/flags').default;.

To get started:

• With node installed,
• Fork flags
• Clone your fork to your machine
• Run npm install to install dev dependencies (there are no regular dependencies; dependencies are for testing and running.)
• Write features, and run npm test and npm run lint. Feature changes should have tests! For ease of use, install eslint for your favorite editor.
• Check out CONTRIBUTING.md for more detailed info.

flags is MIT licensed. copyright 2016 reddit. See LICENSE for more info.