Namespaces

Featurevisor allows namespacing features and segments to tackle the challenges of scaling large projects.

Namespaces help teams organize their features and segments in a structured and hierarchical way, making it easier to manage and maintain them as their project grows larger and more complex over time.

Features#

Creating a namespace for a feature is as simple as putting the feature under a directory, and the directory name then becomes the namespace.

If there is a team working on the checkout flow for e.g., they can create a namespace called checkout and put all their features related to the checkout flow in that namespace:

features/
├── checkout/
│   ├── feature1.yml
│   ├── feature2.yml
│   └── feature3.yml
└── globalFeature.yml

Evaluating features#

By default, path segments are joined with . when deriving feature keys. When evaluating a feature, you can refer to the feature by its namespace and key in the format namespace.featureKey:

const f; // Featurevisor SDK instance
f.isEnabled("checkout.feature1");
f.isEnabled("globalFeature");

Testing features#

When testing features, you can refer to the feature by its namespace and key in the format namespace.featureKey:

feature: checkout.feature1
# ...

The file name and location for test specs do not matter, as long as they exist inside the tests directory.

Segments#

Very similar to features, you can namespace segments by putting them in a directory:

segments/
├── countries/
│   ├── germany.yml
│   └── netherlands.yml
└── globalSegment.yml

Referencing segments#

When defining the rules inside features, you can refer to the segment by its namespace and key in the format namespace.segmentKey:

# ...
rules:
  production:
    - key: '1'
      segments: 'countries.netherlands'
      percentage: 100

Testing segments#

When testing segments, you can refer to the segment by its namespace and key in the format namespace.segmentKey:

segment: countries.nl
# ...

Custom namespace character#

The namespace separator is controlled by namespaceCharacter in your project configuration:

module.exports = {
  namespaceCharacter: ".", // default
};

With the default ".", features/checkout/feature1.yml becomes checkout.feature1.

If you need slash-separated keys for an existing project, configure:

module.exports = {
  namespaceCharacter: "/",
};

Then features/checkout/feature1.yml becomes checkout/feature1.

Comparison#

Namespaces are no replacement for tags or environments, but they can be used in conjunction with them to create a more structured and organized project.

• Tags: for tagging features resulting in targeted and smaller datafiles that your applications consume via SDKs
• Environments: for creating different environments, like production and staging, and then use them in your feature rules to control the rollout of features
• Namespaces: for organizing features and segments in a hierarchical way