Convert Insights, Inc JavaScript SDK

About

This repository contains the JavaScript SDK (nodeJs and browser) needed to integrate Convert.com's Fullstack Product (feature tests, feature flags, feature rollouts) inside third-party apps. This is maintained by the Convert.com team.

Contributing

See CONTRIBUTING for details on how to submit your contribution.

Documentation

See JavaScript SDK Documentation for details on the SDK modules, in addition to practical tutorials.

Requirements

Fullstack projects are slightly different compared to web-based projects, so that

1. General

All entities must have a unique identifier key that is a string when defined at the web interface.

2. Audiences

There is no persistence managed by the SDK directly, instead, as a developer you can provide your own DataStore that is used to make user bucketing persistent. That said, all created Audiences in a Fullstack project shall be of type transient by definition, where conditions will be checked each time they encounter the experience.

3. Segments

Represent Audiences of type segmentation, conditions will be checked on every page-view until they are met. The only difference in a Fullstack project is that if met, the segment does not stay persistent unless you use your own DataStore.

4. Rules

Limited to the following types:

1. generic_bool_key_value: matching type choices are limited to equals
2. generic_numeric_key_value: matching type choices are limited to equalsNumber, less, and lessEqual
3. generic_text_key_value: matching type choices are limited to matches, regexMatches, contains, endsWith, and startsWith

Note: Each rule must have a unique identifier key that is a string

5. Experiences

Limited to the following types:

1. a/b_fullstack: an a/b experience
2. feature_rollout: an experience with only one variation that is not the original

6. Features

Available only to Fullstack projects.

Variables that can be defined at the web interface and used by the SDK, supporting the following types:

1. boolean
2. integer
3. string
4. json

7. Environments

Available only to Fullstack projects.

All matching rules apply only to entities having the same environment. You can create as many environments as you wish, the defaults are:

1. staging
2. production

Getting Started

Install module using npm or yarn:

npm install --save @mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk

Package's build contains definitions for generating entry points in different formats:

• CommonJs - can be found under lib/index.js or lib/index.min.js for the minified version;
• ESM - can be found under lib/index.mjs or lib/index.min.mjs for the minified version;
• UMD - can be found under lib/index.umd.js or lib/index.umd.min.js for the minified version;

The above entry points can also be loaded through unpkg but this method will add a dependency on third-party URLs and therefore is recommended to use it only for evaluation purposes:

<script src="https://unpkg.com/@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk/lib/index.js"></script>

<!-- or the minified version -->
<script src="https://unpkg.com/@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk/lib/index.min.js"></script>

SDK Usage

Import the SDK Inside Your Project

ES6:

import ConvertSDK from '@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk';

CommonJS:

const ConvertSDK = require('@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk').default;

The SDK instance can be initialized by either providing an SDK key or a full project's data object.

Initialize using the SDK Key

Include sdkKey as a string property in the options object you pass to the constructor instance. The SDK will fetch the project configuration from Convert's CDN and will then refresh it every dataRefreshInterval seconds.

const convertSDK = new ConvertSDK({
  sdkKey: 'xxx',
  dataRefreshInterval: 300 //in seconds, 5 minutes
});
await convertSDK.onReady();

After this point, the SDK has been successfully instantiated, project config data has been downloaded, and it is ready to be used for starting a UserContext.

Initialize using Static Configuration

Alternatively, to provide an SDK key**, a static project configuration can be given. The project configuration data can be fetched from https://cdn-4.convertexperiments.com/api/v1/config/account_id/project_id

const config = {
  data: projectData // full project's data
};

const convertSDK = new ConvertSDK(config);

When using static project data, the SDK is instantiated as soon as the instance is created and can be used right away for starting a UserContext.

SDK Configuration Options

The following shows the object model for the configuration options:

import {LogLevel} from '@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk');

const config = {
  sdkKey: '' //either this or 'data' has to be provided
  environment: 'staging',
  logger: {
    logLevel: LogLevel.DEBUG,
    customLoggers: [] // Allows 3rd party loggers to be passed
  },
  dataStore: null, // Allows 3rd party data store to be passed (optional)
  dataRefreshInterval: 300, // in seconds (5 minutes)
  data: projectData
};

projectData structure is as described at https://api.convert.com/doc/serving/#tag/Project-Config

Create User Context

Once the SDK has been created and instantiated, the next step is to create a unique context for the user in scope.

When creating the UserContext, a unique userId is required to be provided. This will be used in the process of deciding which variation/feature to be presented. As long as this userId does not change for a user and the experience configuration remains the same(variations not getting added or removed and traffic allocation not changed), the feature/variation bucketing will stay unchanged. Otherwise, see Persistent Datastore.

For convenience, a list of User Properties that can be later used inside Audience definition evaluation can be provided when creating a UserContext. Any of these can be changed by providing them again when calling any of the functional SDK methods for running experiences, under the attributes.visitorProperties

const userContext = convertSDK.createContext('user-unique-id', {
  country: 'US',
  language: 'en'
});

After creating a userContext, methods for running experiences can be called:

const variation = userContext.runExperience('pricing_experiment', options);

SDK Methods for Running Experiences

General Considerations

Every method that userContext exposes to run one or more experiences, can receive as a parameter an object with two keys:

• locationProperties - key: value object containing properties that are used when evaluating Experiences' Locations;
• visitorProperties - key: value object containing properties that are used when evaluating Experiences' Audiences and which will overwrite the same keys provided when creating the userContext;

On top of this, the environment can be provided as a third parameter.

Run All Active Experiences

The method will loop through each of the active experiences, run them and return, for each of the experiences, the selected variation. Decides whether the user should be bucketed into all variations based on the configuration rules (locations and audiences).

Parameters

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | | ---------- | ------ | -------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | attributes | object | No | An object that specifies attributes for the user. Accepts 3 properties: | | | | | locationProperties an object of key-value pairs that are used for location matching. | | | | | visitorProperties an object of key-value pairs that are used for audience targeting. | | | | | environment optional string. |

Returns

List of bucketed variations.

Example

import ConvertSDK from '@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk';
const config = {
  // full configuration options
};

const convertSDK = new ConvertSDK(config);
const context = convertSDK.createContext('user-unique-id');
const variations = convertSDK.runExperiences();
console.log(variations);

Run a Single Experience

Decides whether the user should be bucketed into a single variation, which is mapped to an experience unique key. The decision is made against the configured experience rules.

Parameters

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | | ------------- | ------ | -------- | -------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | experienceKey | string | Yes | An experience's key that should be activated | | attributes | object | No | An object that specifies attributes for the user. Accepts 3 properties: | | | | | locationProperties an object of key-value pairs that are used for location matching. | | | | | visitorProperties an object of key-value pairs that are used for audience targeting. | | | | | environment optional string. |

Returns

Bucketed variation.

Example

import ConvertSDK from '@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk';
const config = {
  // full configuration options
};

const convertSDK = new ConvertSDK(config);
const context = convertSDK.createContext('user-unique-id');
const variation = context.runExperience('experience-key');
console.log(variation);

Run Multiple Features

Retrieves a list of features that the user already bucketed.

Parameters

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | | ---------- | ------ | -------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | attributes | object | No | An object that specifies attributes for the user. Accepts 4 properties: | | | | | locationProperties an object of key-value pairs that are used for location matching. | | | | | visitorProperties an object of key-value pairs that are used for audience targeting. | | | | | environment optional string. | | | | | typeCasting optional boolean to dontrol automatic type conversion to the variable's defined type. Does not do any JSON validation (defaults to true). |

Returns

List of bucketed features.

Example

import ConvertSDK from '@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk';
const config = {
  // full configuration options
};

const convertSDK = new ConvertSDK(config);
const context = convertSDK.createContext('user-unique-id');
const features = context.runFeatures();
console.log(features);

Run a Single Feature

Retrieves a single feature that the user already bucketed, which is mapped to a feature unique key.

Parameters

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | | ---------- | ------ | -------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | featureKey | string | Yes | A feature key | | attributes | object | No | An object that specifies attributes for the user. Accepts 5 properties: | | | | | locationProperties an object of key-value pairs that are used for location matching. | | | | | visitorProperties an object of key-value pairs that are used for audience targeting. | | | | | environment optional string. | | | | | typeCasting optional boolean to dontrol automatic type conversion to the variable's defined type. Does not do any JSON validation (defaults to true). | | | | | experienceKeys optional array of strings to use only specified experiences. |

Returns

Bucketed feature.

Example

import ConvertSDK from '@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk';
const config = {
  // full configuration options
};

const convertSDK = new ConvertSDK(config);
const context = convertSDK.createContext('user-unique-id');
const feature = context.runFeature('feature-key');
console.log(feature);

Track Conversion Event

Decides whether to send a conversion event, which is mapped to a goal-unique key. The decision is made against the configured goal-triggering rules.

Parameters

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | | ---------- | ------ | -------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | goalKey | string | Yes | A goal key | | attributes | object | No | An object that specifies attributes for the user. Accepts 2 properties: | | | | | ruleData an object of key-value pairs that are used for location matching. | | | | | conversionData an object of key-value pairs that are used for audience targeting. |

Returns

Void.

Example

import ConvertSDK from '@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk';
const config = {
  // full configuration options
};

const convertSDK = new ConvertSDK(config);
const context = convertSDK.createContext('user-unique-id');
context.trackConversion('goal-key', {
  ruleData: {
    action: 'buy'
  },
  conversionData: [
    {
      amount: 10.3,
      productsCount: 2
    }
  ]
});

Set Custom Segments

Decides whether to update custom segments in user context, which is mapped to segments' unique keys. The decision is made against the configured segment rules.

Parameters

| Parameter | Type | Required | Description | | ----------------- | ------ | -------- | ----------------------------------------------------------------- | | segmentsKeys | array | Yes | A list of segments keys | | visitorProperties | object | No | An object of key-value pairs that are used for segments matching. |

Returns

Void.

Example

import ConvertSDK from '@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk';
const config = {
  // full configuration options
};

const convertSDK = new ConvertSDK(config);
const context = convertSDK.createContext('user-unique-id');
context.setCustomSegments(['segments-key'], {
  enabled: true
});

Events

You can capture SDK events as well:

| Event | Triggered by | Callback data | | ---------------- | ---------------------------- | ---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- | | ready | Initializing the SDK | null | | bucketing | Run experience(s) | { visitorId: string, experienceKey: string, variationKey: string } | | | Run feature(s) | { visitorId: string, experienceKey: string, featureKey: string, status: string } | | conversion } | Track conversion | { visitorId: string, goalKey: string } | | config-updated | Refreshing the configuration | null |

const convertSDK,{SystemEvents} = new ConvertSDK({sdkKey: 'xxx'});

convertSDK.on(SystemEvents.READY, function (res, err) {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
  }
});

convertSDK.on(SystemEvents.BUCKETING, function ({visitorId, experienceKey, variationKey, featureKey, status}, err) {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
  } else {
    console.log(visitorId, experienceKey, variationKey, featureKey, status);
  }
});

convertSDK.on(SystemEvents.CONVERSION, function ({visitorId, goalKey}, err) {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
  } else {
    console.log(visitorId, goalKey);
  }
});

convertSDK.on(SystemEvents.CONFIG_UPDATED, function (res, err) {
  if (err) {
    console.error(err);
  }
});

Provide Persistent DataStore

Note: This feature is optional

You can provide your own DataStore that is used to make user bucketing persistent, ensuring persistent experience variation selection, regardless of the experience’s configurations changing or not. As long as Experience variations and/or traffic allocation do not change, the initial user bucketing remains persistent (We use the MurmurHash algorithm to decide which variation will be selected. This ensures the same one is going to be selected each time, as long as the experience’s configuration does not change.)

The provided DataStore interface is expected to provide 2 methods: set and get.

import ConvertSDK from '@mattddean-oss/convertcom-js-sdk';
const config = {
  // full configuration options
};

class CustomDataStore {
  #data = {};
  get(key) {
    if (!key) return this.#data;
    return this.#data[key.toString()];
  }
  set(key, value) {
    if (!key) throw new Error('Invalid CustomDataStore key!');
    this.#data[key.toString()] = value;
  }
}

const dataStore = new CustomDataStore();
const convertSDK = new ConvertSDK({
  ...config,
  dataStore
});

Credits

Copyright(c) 2023 Convert Insights, Inc