Xabaril is a Feature Toggle and A/B testing library for ASP.NET Core. Feature Toogle is a powerful technique that allows developers to deliver new functionality to users withouth changing code. Provides an alternative to to mantain multiples branches (aka feature branches), so any feature can be tested even before it is completed and ready for the release. We can release a version of our product with not production ready features. These non production ready features are hidden (toggled) for the broader set of users but can be enabled to any subset of testing or internal users we want them to try the features.We can use feature toogling to enable or disable features during run time.
A Feature is basically a name which allow us to define a particular feature. Each feature can be enabled based on particular activators, which depending on their configuration will tell us the state of it. Check if a feature is enabled or not can be done in several ways, and it will depend on the framework we are using or particular needs of each case.
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Install the standard Nuget package into your ASP.NET Core application.
Install-Package Xabaril -
Install the InMemoryStore Nuget package into your ASP.NET Core application.
Install-Package Xabaril.InMemoryStore -
In the ConfigureServices method of Startup.cs, register Xabaril, defining one or more features.
services .AddXabaril() .AddXabarilInMemoryStore(opt => { opt.AddFeature("MyFeature") .WithActivator<UTCActivator>(parameters => { parameters.Add("release-date", DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(-1)); }); });
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In the Configure method, insert middleware to expose the generated Xabaril as JSON endpoint.
app.UseXabaril("xabaril/features")
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Now we can make calls to the Xabaril endpoint to check if our feature is active:
http://server:port/xabaril/features?featureName=MyFeature -
At this point, you can view the generated JSON
{ "isEnabled" : true }
You can use this approach in JavaScript or Http clients. We can see other ways to consume Xabaril in MVC and use another stores.
Install the standard Nuget package into your ASP.NET Core application.
Install-Package Xabaril.MVC
With ASP.NET MVC Core we have different options to check if a feature is enabled, for example we can use the Tag Helper feature inside our Razor views.
<feature name="MyFeature">
<div>This content is displayed only when feature <b>MyFeature</b> is <span>Active</span></div>
</feature>If we want to enable or disable the execution of a controller we can do it using the filter FeatureFilter. In this case, if the feature MyFeature is not enabled a NotFound is returned.
[FeatureFilter(FeatureName ="MyFeature")]
public IActionResult FiltersActive()
{
//if the filter is active this is processed
return View();
}If we want to define different behaviors, when the feature is active and when not you can use FeatureToogle instead of FeatureFilter.
[FeatureToogle(FeatureName ="MyFeature")]
[ActionName("someaction")]
public IActionResult SomeActionWhenFeatureIsActive()
{
return View("FeatureView");
}
[ActionName("someaction")]
public IActionResult SomeActionWhenFeatureIsNotActive()
{
return View("DefaultView");
}For particular needs and customization of execution blocks we can use the service defined with the IFeaturesService interface directly in the code of any of our controllers.
public class HomeController : Controller
{
private readonly IFeaturesService _features;
public HomeController(IFeaturesService features)
{
_features = features;
}
public async Task<IActionResult> Index()
{
if (await _features.IsEnabledAsync("MyFeature"))
{
ViewData["Message"] = "My Feature Is Active";
}
else
{
ViewData["Message"] = "My Feature Is NOT Active";
}
return View();
}
}An Activator is code which defines when a feature is enabled or not. Each feature can use one or multiple activator at the same time. In Xabaril you have many different activators out of the box, and of course you can write your custom activators.
With roll-out activators we can set a value with which we can do a rool-out of the feature. In that case, the particular feature, will be only only enable to a defined percentage of the users. This roll-out is done based on a hash function defined in Jenkins-Partitioner. For now there is only two roll-out: activators
1.- RolloutHeaderValueActivator: rolling out features depending the value of specified header.
2.- RolloutUserNameActivator: rolling out features depending the authenticated user.
With UTCActivator you can use any UTC date time to define when a feature is active or not. If the date when the feature is tested is greather than the date specified in release-date parameters the activator is enabled.
var configurer = new FeatureConfigurer("Test#1")
.WithActivator<UTCActivator>(parameters =>
{
parameters.Add("release-date", DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(1));
});
UTCActivator also support the parameter format-date in order to specify the date format.
With FromToActivator you can define the dates between the feature is active or not.
var configurer = new FeatureConfigurer("Test#1")
.WithActivator<FromToActivator>(parameters =>
{
parameters.Add("release-from-date", DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(1));
parameters.Add("release-to-date", DateTime.UtcNow.AddDays(5));
});
FromToActivator also support the parameter format-date in order to specify the date format.
With UserActivator you can enable any feature for specified authenticated users.
var configurer = new FeatureConfigurer("Test#1")
.WithActivator<UserActivator>(parameters =>
{
parameters.Add("user","user1;user2;user3");
});Like UserActivator RoleActivator define the Role that the user need to have some feature enabled.
var configurer = new FeatureConfigurer("Test#1")
.WithActivator<RoleActivator>(parameters =>
{
parameters.Add("role","admin");
});With location activator you can specify the IP request countries on some feature is active.
var configurer = new FeatureConfigurer("Test#1")
.WithActivator<LocationActivator>(parameters =>
{
parameters.Add("locations","Spain;USA");
});By default the location of any IP is discovered by any implementation of IPApiLocationProvider, Xabaril out-of-box only provide a NO-service but is very easy create this implementation using some free services like IP-API.
public class IPApiLocationProvider
: IGeoLocationProvider
{
static HttpClient _client = new HttpClient() { BaseAddress = new Uri("http://ip-api.com/json/") };
public async Task<string> FindLocationAsync(string ipAddress)
{
var response = await _client.GetAsync(ipAddress);
if (response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
{
var content = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
dynamic result = JObject.Parse(content);
if (result.status.Equals("success"))
{
return result.country;
}
}
return null;
}
}When you have a new implementation for any service in Xabaril you can override using the specified method in XabarilBuilder
services.AddXabaril()
.AddXabarilOptions(options =>
{
options.FailureMode = Xabaril.FailureMode.LogAndDisable;
})
.AddXabarilInMemoryStore(options =>
{
options.AddFeature("Test#1")
.WithActivator<LocationActivator>(_ => _.Add("locations", "Spain;United States"));
}).AddGeoLocationProvider<IPApiLocationProvider>();At this moment you can use two diferent stores, memory and Redis, to save your features configurations:
Install the InMemoryStore Nuget package into your ASP.NET Core application.
Install-Package Xabaril.InMemoryStore
InMemoryFeaturesStore depend on ASP.NET Core IMemoryCache and save all features configuration in memory.
services.AddXabaril()
.AddXabarilOptions(options =>
{
options.FailureMode = Xabaril.FailureMode.LogAndDisable;
})
.AddXabarilInMemoryStore(options =>
{
options.AddFeature("Test#1")
.WithActivator<LocationActivator>(_ => _.Add("locations", "Spain;United States"));
}).AddGeoLocationProvider<IPApiLocationProvider>();Install the InMemoryStore Nuget package into your ASP.NET Core application.
Install-Package Xabaril.RedisStore
RedisFeaturesStore depend on ServiceStack.Redis packages and save all the features configuration on Redis Server.
services.AddXabaril()
.AddXabarilOptions(options =>
{
options.FailureMode = Xabaril.FailureMode.LogAndDisable;
})
.AddRedisStore(options =>
{
options.RedisHost = "localhost:6379";
options.AddFeature("LocationActivator")
.WithActivator<LocationActivator>(_ => _.Add("locations", "Spain;United States"));
}).AddGeoLocationProvider<IPApiLocationProvider>();