During the [previous post] I looked at what feature flags are and why you’d want to use them. In this post I will explore how I’ve implemented them in the current web-application I’m working on. It’s a very simple process which means there are no excuses not to use a feature flag in your application.
everything is easier on Rails
The [Rollout] gem
I use the [Rollout] gem as a way of implementing Feature flags. It’s pretty easy to use although there are a few things I don’t like about it. The important things are:
1. It relies on redis which I already have in my stack.
2. It doesn’t have a user-interface so you must enable features with the production console.
Here’s how you’d use rollout:
ruby
if $rollout.active? :my_cool_feature
my_cool_feature
end
Then you’d be able to activate that feature on the console by typing:
ruby
$rollout.activate :my_cool_feature
Activating a single user or a group
Often you’ll want to activate a single user or a group of users. To do this we need to modify our feature flag invocation as follows:
ruby
if $rollout.active? :my_cool_feature, current_user
my_cool_feature
end
Then you could activate it for a specific user as follows:
ruby
$rollout.activate_user :my_cool_feature, User.find(1)
Alternatively you can define a group of users:
ruby
# config/initializers/rollout.rb
$rollout.define_group(:staff) do |user|
user.staff?
end
Then you can specify a group to activate in the console instead:
ruby
$rollout.activate_group :my_cool_feature, :staff
Global variables are yucky
Personally I don’t like litering my codebase with $global $variables. Also it’s normally useful that feature flags are always enabled in development and test environments. What I do is wrap Rollout in a very small class:
ruby
class Feature
def self.active?(*args)
(!feature_flags_enabled?) || $rollout.active?(*args) rescue true
end
def self.feature_flags_enabled?
Rails.env.production? || Rails.env.staging?
end
end
This lets me use Feature.active? in my code which I believe is more intention-revealing than $rollout.active? and more aesthetically pleasing.
Ready to Rollout?
Rollout has other features (like enabling flags based on percentages) and the README has links detailing how to automatically disable features based on errors. The reason I like Rollout is that it’s very simple to get going, and integrates easily into your own stack (assuming you have Redis).
There are alternative libraries you can use such as [Flip] which have different features such as ActiveRecord support, or a web-dashboard for enabling/disabling flags.
[Rollout]: https://github.com/FetLife/rollout
[Flip]: https://github.com/pda/flip
[previous post]: https://reinteractive.net/posts/220-better-development-with-feature-flags
