@superflag/client-react

Superflag is an extensible feature flag library designed to support multiple tiers of feature flag infrastructure, from a simple constant to staged rollouts. It is designed to support multiple flag backends via an extensible plugin-style architecture that allows for easy upgrades to different flag systems with little to no maintenance overhead.

Installation

The base Superflag package includes multiple default flag source plugins and includes support for Typescript out of the box.

npm i @superflag/client-react

API Reference

Usage Overview

Configure Flag Sources (required)

The flag provider uses a basic React Context to pass down the fetched flag values to either the hooks or default components. In order for the other utilities in the package to function properly, one must configure the Flag Provider to wrap any code that depends on it (probably best at the root level of the project).

The FeatureFlagProvider helper component simplifies the process of setting up feature flags to a single component. Here's an example App with the flag provider configured with a constant value flag source:

// ...
import { FeatureFlagProvider } from '@superflag/client-react';
import { ConstantFlagSource } from '@superflag/client-react/build/defaultSources/constant';

const App = () => {
  // ...

  return (
    <IntlProvider>
      <FeatureFlagProvider
        flagSource={
          new ConstantFlagSource({
            useV2ui: false,
            useNewPaymentGateway: true,
          })
        }>
        <div>
          <Header />
          <Content />
          <Footer />
        </div>
      </FeatureFlagProvider>
    </IntlProvider>
  );
};

Extra flexibility

In the unlikely event that you need more flexibility, you can separate the provider and context declaration for even more extensibility via a combination of useFeatureFeatureFlagProvider and FeatureFlagProviderRaw. Here's the same example but with the calls split out:

// ...
import {
  FeatureFlagProviderRaw,
  useFeatureFlagProvider,
} from '@superflag/client-react';
import { ConstantFlagSource } from '@superflag/client-react/build/defaultSources/constant';

const App = () => {
  const flagContext = useFeatureFlagProvider({
    flagSource: new ConstantFlagSource({
      useV2ui: false,
      useNewPaymentGateway: true,
    }),
  });

  // ...

  return (
    <IntlProvider>
      <FeatureFlagProviderRaw {...flagContext}>
        <div>
          <Header />
          <Content />
          <Footer />
        </div>
      </FeatureFlagProviderRaw>
    </IntlProvider>
  );
};

Consuming flags

There are multiple hooks and convenience components available. Both can be used together if desired, the convenience components just reduce the amount of identical code by handling common use cases (hiding/showing a component based on a flag).

Hooks:

• useFeatureFlagContext() - returns the entire flag context, including loading, the flags, and the identify function
• useFeatureFlags() - returns all feature flags in key-value form
• useFeatureFlag(flagKey) - returns a single flag value

Components:

• <FeatureFlagGate flagKey={...}> - Hides its children if the flag is false, shows the children if the flag is true
• <FeatureFlagSwitch whenTrue={...} whenFalse={...}> - shows the passed value of whenFalse if the flag is false, shows the passed value of whenTrue if the flag is true. Both props are optional

Here's an example where everything is used:

import {
  useFeatureFlagContext,
  useFeatureFlags,
  useFeatureFlag,
  FeatureFlagGate,
  FeatureFlagSwitch,
} from '@superflag/client-react';

const ShoppingCart = () => {
  // option 1
  const { loading, flags } = useFeatureFlagContext();
  // option 2
  const { useV2ui } = useFeatureFlags();
  // option 3
  const useNewPaymentGateway = useFeatureFlag('useNewPaymentGateway');

  // apollo GQL mutation function
  const [checkout] = useMutation(endpoints.checkout);

  return (
    <div>
      {loading && <LoadingSpinner />}
      {/* option 1 */}
      <h1>{useV2ui ? 'Cart' : 'New and Improved Cart'}</h1>
      {/* option 2 */}
      <FeatureFlagGate flagKey="useV2ui">
        <input name="v2-input" />
      </FeatureFlagGate>
      {/* option 3*/}
      <FeatureFlagSwitch
        flagKey="useV2ui"
        whenTrue={<textarea name="v2-textarea" />}
        whenFalse={<select name="v1-select" />}
      />

      <button
        onClick={() => {
          checkout({ variables: { price: useNewPaymentGateway ? 1.5 : 2.5 } });
        }}>
        Checkout
      </button>
    </div>
  );
};

Testing

Superflag supports mocking flags for testing purposes in one of two ways:

• For unit tests, MockFeatureFlagProvider can be used to mock the feature flag values
• For integration/e2e testing (live), one can swap out the flagSource when in different environments. For example, one could switch a LaunchDarkly flag source out for a constant flag source in testing/development environments

Bugs & Contributions

Please report any bugs to the Github issue tracker for this project. Any bug reports or PR submissions are appreciated!