HiP-FeatureToggle

Microservice that implements feature toggles as described in our QA workflow.

See the graphs page for a list of code contributions.

Getting started

• Install PostgreSQL
• Launch the app
  • via Visual Studio: Open the solution (*.sln) and run the app (F5)
  • via Terminal: Execute dotnet run from the project folder containing HiP-FeatureToggle.csproj

The app is preconfigured to run on dev machines without any manual configuration (using the database on localhost). See appsettings.json for a list of configuration fields and their default values.

Core Concepts

The service manages a hierarchy (tree) of features and a list of feature groups.

A feature consists of an ID and a descriptive name (e.g. "Can See Seminar Content"). A feature group (better thought of as a "user group") consists of an ID, a name (e.g. "Beta testers"), a list of users ("members") belonging to that group, and a list of features that are enabled for the members of the group. Each user belongs to exactly one group. There are two special, pre-defined groups:

• 'Default': If a user has not (yet) been assigned to a group, he/she is in the default group. Furthermore, deleting a group moves all its members to the 'Default'-group again.
• 'Public': This group only applies to unauthenticated, anonymous users. Users cannot be explicitly assigned to this group.

'Default' and 'Public' are protected groups which means that they cannot be renamed or deleted.

Features can be enabled and disabled for individual groups (but not for individual users). A feature is considered effectively enabled for a particular user if it is effectively enabled for his/her group. A feature is considered effectively enabled for a group if the feature itself as well as all ancestor features in the hierarchy (parent, parent's parent, ...) are enabled for that group.