Microservices Architecture is a revolutionary approach to software development that empowers applications to scale and evolve with unparalleled flexibility. But: How do feature flags help in this dynamic landscape of microservices?
One of the most important technological breakthroughs of the century has been the internet — a digital network that makes the rest of the world feel like our next-door neighbor. Within the realm of the Internet, a recent technology known as cloud computing has paved the way for software developers to rent and manage remote servers in the cloud for hosting their applications. A smaller component of this technology is called Function as a Service, abbreviated as FaaS. FaaS removes the complexity of managing a full-blown backend server, enabling developers to focus solely on writing and executing the necessary functions required to run their applications.
When FaaS and feature flags are combined, you can toggle individual functions or code blocks in those functions on or off without touching its code. Let's take a closer look.
Feature flags are becoming a prominent part of DevOps practices and for good reason. They allow you to turn features in your live application on or off without redeploying code. You might think that something so powerful would require some rocket science-level programming to implement, but you'd be surprised to know that, at their core, feature flags are booleans and if-then-else statements.
Okay, that's an oversimplification of things, but it's true. And while there are different ways of implementing feature flags, they all share this common core. That said, let's take a broader look at feature flags and their uses in modern software development.
Government agencies, with their strict security requirements, often face difficulties in fully embracing DevSecOps practices. Balancing the need for rapid feature releases with robust security measures poses a challenge. Feature flags offer a promising solution in this context. By seamlessly integrating into DevOps and DevSecOps pipelines, they can empower government agencies to effectively manage feature releases while maintaining high levels of security.
Adding new features to existing applications used to mean that code pushed into production automatically updated the entire app. This raises security risks to the existing application, because a single bug could have catastrophic consequences. This risk can be reduced by implementing a secure feature management architecture that allows code updates with increased flexibility and the power to easily switch between versions.
At ConfigCat, we always prioritize our customers' feedback and requests to ensure we provide the best experience possible. That's why we took action on a user suggestion to support browser extensions based on the Manifest V3 platform.
We're excited to announce the release of our ConfigCat SDK for Chromium Extensions. This SDK is a specialized fork of our JavaScript SDK. Designed to allow for easy incorporation of our feature flag services into browser add-ons, it features a specialized cache implementation leveraging the chrome.storage API, which enables proper SDK functionality.
Feature flags are essential for effective feature release and management. Using them, we can control what features end users can see and which should remain hidden. Feature flagging allows developers to plan, launch and test new features remotely without editing code. While these benefits are fantastic, what about code testing? Having some methods in place for testing the integration of feature flags in our code can increase the likelihood of smooth feature integrations.
According to an article published by CNET, the growth of the gaming industry is expected to increase. Due to this, new game titles are on the rise as greater demands are placed on gaming companies to remain competitive by keeping their users engaged with new features and updates. With the proper feature flagging mechanism, new features and updates can be effectively managed and released to users.
Ever since the dawn of feature releases, feature flags have become the de facto standard for managing and controlling features in software applications. Many software development methodologies these days such as agile, are heavily focused on releasing continuous updates and features. In addition, a few companies have based their entire business around serving clients a cloud-based feature flagging solution. But in limited bandwidth situations or when you need to optimize the performance of your client-facing applications making API requests may not be ideal. This can be handled by implementing a process called caching with the help of a popular tool called Redis.
It can be time-consuming to create and manage the infrastructure that drives your software applications as they grow and become larger. Also, what about ongoing updates and releases of new features? Luckily, there is a solution to this problem in the form of a tool designed by Hashicorp called Terraform. This allows us to define our infrastructure in a central configuration file without having to create it on every provider platform we use.
