Unleash::Client

Unleash client so you can roll out your features with confidence.

Leverage the Unleash Server for powerful feature toggling in your ruby/rails applications.

Supported Ruby Interpreters

• MRI 2.7
• MRI 2.6
• MRI 2.5
• MRI 2.4
• jruby

Installation

Add this line to your application's Gemfile:

gem 'unleash', '~> 3.2.0'

And then execute:

$ bundle

Or install it yourself as:

$ gem install unleash

Configure

It is required to configure the url of the unleash server and app_name with the name of the runninng application. Please substitute the sample 'http://unleash.herokuapp.com/api' for the url of your own instance.

It is highly recommended to configure the instance_id parameter as well.

Unleash.configure do |config|
  config.url         = 'http://unleash.herokuapp.com/api'
  config.app_name    = 'my_ruby_app'
end

or instantiate the client with the valid configuration:

UNLEASH = Unleash::Client.new(url: 'http://unleash.herokuapp.com/api', app_name: 'my_ruby_app')

List of Arguments

Argument	Description	Required?	Type	Default Value
url	Unleash server URL.	Y	String	N/A
app_name	Name of your program.	Y	String	N/A
instance_id	Identifier for the running instance of program. Important so you can trace back to where metrics are being collected from. Highly recommended be be set.	N	String	random UUID
environment	Environment the program is running on. Could be for example prod or dev. Not yet in use.	N	String	default
refresh_interval	How often the unleash client should check with the server for configuration changes.	N	Integer	15
metrics_interval	How often the unleash client should send metrics to server.	N	Integer	10
disable_client	Disables all communication with the Unleash server, effectively taking it offline. If set, is_enabled? will always answer with the default_value and configuration validation is skipped. Defeats the entire purpose of using unleash, but can be useful in when running tests.	N	Boolean	false
disable_metrics	Disables sending metrics to Unleash server.	N	Boolean	false
custom_http_headers	Custom headers to send to Unleash.	N	Hash	{}
timeout	How long to wait for the connection to be established or wait in reading state (open_timeout/read_timeout)	N	Integer	30
retry_limit	How many consecutive failures in connecting to the Unleash server are allowed before giving up.	N	Integer	1
backup_file	Filename to store the last known state from the Unleash server. Best to not change this from the default.	N	String	Dir.tmpdir + "/unleash-#{app_name}-repo.json
logger	Specify a custom Logger class to handle logs for the Unleash client.	N	Class	Logger.new(STDOUT)
log_level	Change the log level for the Logger class. Constant from Logger::Severity.	N	Constant	Logger::ERROR

For in a more in depth look, please see lib/unleash/configuration.rb.

Usage in a plain Ruby Application

require 'unleash'
require 'unleash/context'

@unleash = Unleash::Client.new(url: 'http://unleash.herokuapp.com/api', app_name: 'my_ruby_app')

feature_name = "AwesomeFeature"
unleash_context = Unleash::Context.new
unleash_context.user_id = 123

if @unleash.is_enabled?(feature_name, unleash_context)
  puts " #{feature_name} is enabled according to unleash"
else
  puts " #{feature_name} is disabled according to unleash"
end

Usage in a Rails Application

Add Initializer

Put in config/initializers/unleash.rb:

Unleash.configure do |config|
  config.url      = 'http://unleash.herokuapp.com/api'
  config.app_name = Rails.application.class.parent.to_s
  # config.instance_id = "#{Socket.gethostname}"
  config.logger   = Rails.logger
  config.environment = Rails.env
end

UNLEASH = Unleash::Client.new

For config.instance_id use a string with a unique identification for the running instance. For example: it could be the hostname, if you only run one App per host. Or the docker container id, if you are running in docker. If it is not set the client will generate an unique UUID for each execution.

Add Initializer if using Puma

In puma.rb ensure that the unleash client is configured and instantiated as below, inside the on_worker_boot code block:

on_worker_boot do
  # ...

  Unleash.configure do |config|
    config.url      = 'http://unleash.herokuapp.com/api'
    config.app_name = Rails.application.class.parent.to_s
    config.environment = Rails.env
  end
  Rails.configuration.unleash = Unleash::Client.new
end

Instead of the configuration in config/initializers/unleash.rb.

Set Unleash::Context

Be sure to add the following method and callback in the application controller to have @unleash_context set for all requests:

Add in app/controllers/application_controller.rb:

  before_action :set_unleash_context

  private
  def set_unleash_context
    @unleash_context = Unleash::Context.new(
      session_id: session.id,
      remote_address: request.remote_ip,
      user_id: session[:user_id]
    )
  end

Or if you see better fit, only in the controllers that you will be using unleash.

Sample usage

Then wherever in your application that you need a feature toggle, you can use:

if UNLEASH.is_enabled? "AwesomeFeature", @unleash_context
  puts "AwesomeFeature is enabled"
end

or if client is set in Rails.configuration.unleash:

if Rails.configuration.unleash.is_enabled? "AwesomeFeature", @unleash_context
  puts "AwesomeFeature is enabled"
end

If the feature is not found in the server, it will by default return false. However you can override that by setting the default return value to true:

if UNLEASH.is_enabled? "AwesomeFeature", @unleash_context, true
  puts "AwesomeFeature is enabled by default"
end

Alternatively by using if_enabled you can send a code block to be executed as a parameter:

UNLEASH.if_enabled "AwesomeFeature", @unleash_context, true do
  puts "AwesomeFeature is enabled by default"
end

Variations

If no variant is found in the server, use the fallback variant.

fallback_variant = Unleash::Variant.new(name: 'default', enabled: true, payload: {"color" => "blue"})
variant = UNLEASH.get_variant "ColorVariants", @unleash_context, fallback_variant

puts "variant color is: #{variant.payload.fetch('color')}"

Client methods

Method Name	Description	Return Type
is_enabled?	Check if feature toggle is to be enabled or not.	Boolean
enabled?	Alias to the is_enabled? method. But more ruby idiomatic.	Boolean
if_enabled	Run a code block, if a feature is enabled.	yield
get_variant	Get variant for a given feature	Unleash::Variant
shutdown	Save metrics to disk, flush metrics to server, and then kill ToggleFetcher and MetricsReporter threads. A safe shutdown. Not really useful in long running applications, like web applications.	nil
shutdown!	Kill ToggleFetcher and MetricsReporter threads immediately.	nil

Local test client

# cli unleash client:
bundle exec bin/unleash-client --help

# or a simple sample implementation (with values hardcoded):
bundle exec examples/simple.rb

Available Strategies

This client comes with the all the required strategies out of the box:

• ApplicationHostnameStrategy
• DefaultStrategy
• GradualRolloutRandomStrategy
• GradualRolloutSessionIdStrategy
• GradualRolloutUserIdStrategy
• RemoteAddressStrategy
• UnknownStrategy
• UserWithIdStrategy

Development

After checking out the repo, run bin/setup to install dependencies. Then, run rake spec to run the tests. You can also run bin/console for an interactive prompt that will allow you to experiment.

To install this gem onto your local machine, run bundle exec rake install. To release a new version, update the version number in version.rb, and then run bundle exec rake release, which will create a git tag for the version, push git commits and tags, and push the .gem file to rubygems.org.

Contributing

Bug reports and pull requests are welcome on GitHub at https://github.com/unleash/unleash-client-ruby.

Please include tests with any pull requests, to avoid regressions.