Getting Started with Feature Flags

In my early days as a frontend developer, I would build features, merge their Git branch into the main branch, and consider it a release. GitHub Actions—or whatever CI/CD tool I was using at the time—would then kick in and automatically deploy the new features. This was common practice, and feature flags weren’t typically covered in online courses.

For small projects, this approach works fine. However, when building larger applications or working at companies that serve a significant number of users, incorporating feature flags becomes essential.

In this post, I'll walk you through how feature flags work, and in future posts, we'll explore how to implement them in your code.

What Are Feature Flags

Software usually contains many parts; some of these parts add new features. For example, a new button, an enhanced game character, dark mode, etc. Often, developers need a way to manage these features, like toggling them on or off, configuring who gets to see and use them, etc. This is where feature flags help.

A feature flag is a software tool that you can integrate into your software to dependently manage one or more features.

How to Get Started with Feature Flags

Feature flagging isn't tied to a specific programming language or framework. Here's an example of a simple JavaScript object representing a feature flag:

const newUserInterfaceFeatureFlag = {
    id: 'newUserInterfaceFeatureFlag',
    enabled: true,
    name: "New User Interface",
    description: "Updated UI with modern design",
};

This object could be stored in a database and queried via an API. You can then add logic to your code to render or hide based on the enabled value.

Conclusion

In an upcoming post, we'll explore how to create a feature flag locally and use it in an application.