Flipper 0.27 (📥📤) and 0.28 (👨👩👧👦)
· John Nunemaker · 3 min read
Why hello you dapper feature flagger!
Wait... what? Didn't I just email you a few days ago?
WHY YES I DID.
Awesome things are happening and I just want to Flipper.enable(:shout_from_rooftop, me) about them!
Today I have another BOGO deal for you -- 0.27 and 0.28.
0.27 - Import (📥) and Export (📤)
Flipper has long had Flipper.import(other_flipper), but now it also has Flipper.export!
Even cooler is that the UI now supports exporting and importing a backup. So now anytime you want, you can click export to download a backup file of all your features and their data.
Then, if you need to you can upload that file right back and restore all that feature data.
I bet you feel safer already! Probably upgraded while reading this and you've already exported 3 backups you wily programmer you.
If you are the only one who hasn't at this point, update flipper and click on "Settings" from the Flipper UI. You'll get a page like the one below.
From here you can download an export or upload one.
API
I also snuck in a new endpoint for import in Flipper::Api and a corresponding use of it in the http adapter (which Cloud uses). This means that importing from OSS to Cloud is now a single HTTP request instead of many. Yay!
Of course this goodness works from code or a console. But I thought it was neat to drop it in the UI as well. Cloud will accept these export files soon as well.
0.28 - Multiple Actors (👨👩👧👦)
BUT WAIT! THERE IS MORE! 0.28 is a feature and performance improvement all wrapped up in one tiny 🎁.
A common feature flag idiom is to check multiple types of actors to see if a feature is enabled. This gives you control to release things at a few levels in your app.
For example, on Box Out we often check the user, team and org to see if a feature is enabled. Before, we'd have to do something like:
if [user, user.team, user.org].any? { |actor| Flipper.enabled?(:my_feature, actor) }
# do something
end
This worked ok, but it was slower (3 > 1) and changed the probability odds for % of actors (explained below).
Now, you can pass multiple actors:
Flipper.enabled?(:my_feature, user, user.team, user.org)
Or an array of actors:
Flipper.enabled?(:my_feature, [user, user.team, user.org])
Slick, eh?
This is the principle of fewer & faster. Doing one feature check means fewer calls to instrumentation (and subscribers) and non-actor gates (like boolean and % of time).
Additionally, the algorithm for consistently rolling out a feature to a % of actors now factors in all actors. This means if you enable 50% of actors and always pass in user, user.team and user.org, then only 50% of that full combination is enabled, rather than 50% of users + 50% of teams + 50% of orgs (which would total up to a lot higher than 50%).
On my laptop, passing in multiple actors is about 2.5x faster for 3 actors:
bundle exec ruby benchmark/enabled_multiple_actors_ips.rb
Calculating -------------------------------------
with array of actors 144.002k (± 0.6%) i/s - 731.952k in 5.083089s
with multiple enabled? checks
57.018k (± 0.4%) i/s - 290.496k in 5.094918s
Comparison:
with array of actors: 144001.9 i/s
with multiple enabled? checks: 57017.9 i/s - 2.53x slower
And 5x faster for 8 actors (source):
bundle exec ruby benchmark/enabled_multiple_actors_ips.rb
Calculating -------------------------------------
with array of actors 108.559k (± 1.0%) i/s - 546.150k in 5.031447s
with multiple enabled? checks
21.972k (± 0.4%) i/s - 110.250k in 5.017841s
Comparison:
with array of actors: 108558.8 i/s
with multiple enabled? checks: 21971.9 i/s - 4.94x slower
Between the improvements in 0.26.x and 0.28, Flipper.enabled? is now swimmingly (🏊) fast.
I highly recommend upgrading to 0.28. Please let me know if you have any issues and I hope you have a great day!
Get audit history, rollbacks, advanced permissions, analytics, and all of your projects in one place.
You can choose from several tiers to sponsor Flipper on GitHub and get some great benefits!
