@unleash/proxy-client-react

What is @unleash/proxy-client-react?

@unleash/proxy-client-react is a React client for the Unleash feature management system. It allows developers to easily integrate feature toggles into their React applications, enabling dynamic feature management and experimentation.

What are @unleash/proxy-client-react's main functionalities?

Initialize Unleash Client

This code initializes the Unleash client with the necessary configuration, including the URL of the Unleash API, the client key, and the application name. The `start` method is called to begin fetching feature toggles.

import { UnleashClient } from '@unleash/proxy-client-react';

const client = new UnleashClient({
  url: 'https://app.unleash-hosted.com/demo/api/',
  clientKey: 'proxy-client-key',
  appName: 'my-react-app'
});

client.start();

Use Feature Toggles in Components

This code demonstrates how to use the `useFlag` hook to check the status of a feature toggle within a React component. Depending on whether the feature toggle is enabled or disabled, different content is rendered.

import { useFlag } from '@unleash/proxy-client-react';

const MyComponent = () => {
  const isEnabled = useFlag('my-feature-toggle');

  return (
    <div>
      {isEnabled ? <p>Feature is enabled</p> : <p>Feature is disabled</p>}
    </div>
  );
};

Custom Context Provider

This code shows how to wrap your application with the `UnleashProvider` to provide the Unleash client configuration context to all components within the application. This makes it easier to use feature toggles throughout the app.

import { UnleashProvider } from '@unleash/proxy-client-react';

const App = () => (
  <UnleashProvider
    config={{
      url: 'https://app.unleash-hosted.com/demo/api/',
      clientKey: 'proxy-client-key',
      appName: 'my-react-app'
    }}
  >
    <MyComponent />
  </UnleashProvider>
);

Other packages similar to @unleash/proxy-client-react

react-feature-toggles

react-feature-toggles is a lightweight library for managing feature toggles in React applications. It provides a simple API for defining and using feature toggles, but it does not offer the same level of integration with a feature management system like Unleash.

launchdarkly-react-client-sdk

launchdarkly-react-client-sdk is the official React SDK for LaunchDarkly, a feature management platform. It offers similar functionality to @unleash/proxy-client-react, including feature flag evaluation and context management, but it is tied to the LaunchDarkly service.

react-ab-test

react-ab-test is a library for A/B testing in React applications. It allows developers to define experiments and variants, and track user interactions. While it focuses on A/B testing rather than feature toggles, it provides similar capabilities for experimentation.

README

Installation

npm install @unleash/proxy-client-react unleash-proxy-client
# or
yarn add @unleash/proxy-client-react unleash-proxy-client

How to use

This library uses the core unleash-proxy-client JS client as a base.

Initialize the client

NOTE: unleash-proxy is in maintenance mode. It is recommend to use the Frontend API or unleash-edge instead.

Prepare Unleash Proxy secret or Frontend API Access token.

Import the provider like this in your entrypoint file (typically index.js/ts):

import { createRoot } from 'react-dom/client';
import { FlagProvider } from '@unleash/proxy-client-react';

const config = {
  url: '<unleash-url>/api/frontend', // Your front-end API URL or the Unleash proxy's URL (https://<proxy-url>/proxy)
  clientKey: '<your-token>', // A client-side API token OR one of your proxy's designated client keys (previously known as proxy secrets)
  refreshInterval: 15, // How often (in seconds) the client should poll the proxy for updates
  appName: 'your-app-name', // The name of your application. It's only used for identifying your application
};

const root = createRoot(document.getElementById('root'));

root.render(
  <React.StrictMode>
    <FlagProvider config={config}>
      <App />
    </FlagProvider>
  </React.StrictMode>
);

Connection options

To connect this SDK to your Unleash instance's front-end API, use the URL to your Unleash instance's front-end API (<unleash-url>/api/frontend) as the url parameter. For the clientKey parameter, use a FRONTEND token generated from your Unleash instance. Refer to the how to create API tokens guide for the necessary steps.

To connect this SDK to unleash-edge, follow the documentation provided in the unleash-edge repository.

To connect this SDK to the Unleash proxy, use the proxy's URL and a proxy client key. The configuration section of the Unleash proxy docs contains more info on how to configure client keys for your proxy.

Check feature toggle status

To check if a feature is enabled:

import { useFlag } from '@unleash/proxy-client-react';

const TestComponent = () => {
  const enabled = useFlag('travel.landing');

  if (enabled) {
    return <SomeComponent />;
  }
  return <AnotherComponent />;
};

export default TestComponent;

Check variants

To check variants:

import { useVariant } from '@unleash/proxy-client-react';

const TestComponent = () => {
  const variant = useVariant('travel.landing');

  if (variant.enabled && variant.name === 'SomeComponent') {
    return <SomeComponent />;
  } else if (variant.enabled && variant.name === 'AnotherComponent') {
    return <AnotherComponent />;
  }
  return <DefaultComponent />;
};

export default TestComponent;

Defer rendering until flags fetched

useFlagsStatus retrieves the ready state and error events. Follow the following steps in order to delay rendering until the flags have been fetched.

import { useFlagsStatus } from '@unleash/proxy-client-react';

const MyApp = () => {
  const { flagsReady, flagsError } = useFlagsStatus();

  if (!flagsReady) {
    return <Loading />;
  }
  return <MyComponent error={flagsError} />;
};

Updating context

Initial context can be specified on a FlagProvider config.context property.

<FlagProvider config={{ ...config, context: { userId: 123 }}>

This code sample shows you how to update the unleash context dynamically:

import { useUnleashContext, useFlag } from '@unleash/proxy-client-react';

const MyComponent = ({ userId }) => {
  const variant = useFlag('my-toggle');
  const updateContext = useUnleashContext();

  useEffect(() => {
    // context is updated with userId
    updateContext({ userId });
  }, [userId]);

  // OR if you need to perform an action right after new context is applied
  useEffect(() => {
    async function run() {
      // Can wait for the new flags to pull in from the different context
      await updateContext({ userId });
      console.log('new flags loaded for', userId);
    }
    run();
  }, [userId]);
};

Listening to events

The core JavaScript client emits various types of events depending on internal activities. You can listen to these events by using a hook to access the client and then directly attaching event listeners. Alternatively, if you're using the FlagProvider with a client, you can directly use this client to listen to the events. See the full list of events here.

NOTE: FlagProvider uses these internal events to provide information through useFlagsStatus.

import { useUnleashContext, useFlag } from '@unleash/proxy-client-react';

const MyComponent = ({ userId }) => {
  const client = useUnleashClient();

  useEffect(() => {
    if (client) {
      const handleError = () => {
        // Handle error
      }

      client.on('error', handleError)
    }

    return () => {
      client.off('error', handleError)
    }
  }, [client])

  // ...rest of component
};

Advanced use cases

Deferring client start

By default, the Unleash client will start polling the Proxy for toggles immediately when the FlagProvider component renders. You can prevent it by setting startClient prop to false. This is useful when you'd like to for example bootstrap the client and work offline.

Deferring the client start gives you more fine-grained control over when to start fetching the feature toggle configuration. This could be handy in cases where you need to get some other context data from the server before fetching toggles, for instance.

To start the client, use the client's start method. The below snippet of pseudocode will defer polling until the end of the asyncProcess function.

const client = new UnleashClient({
  /* ... */
});

const MyAppComponent = () => {
  useEffect(() => {
    const asyncProcess = async () => {
      // do async work ...
      client.start();
    };
    asyncProcess();
  }, []);

  return (
    // Pass client as `unleashClient` and set `startClient` to `false`
    <FlagProvider unleashClient={client} startClient={false}>
      <App />
    </FlagProvider>
  );
};

Use unleash client directly

import { useUnleashContext, useUnleashClient } from '@unleash/proxy-client-react'

const MyComponent = ({ userId }) => {
  const client = useUnleashClient();

  const login = () => {
    // login user
    if (client.isEnabled("new-onboarding")) {
      // Send user to new onboarding flow
    } else (
      // send user to old onboarding flow
    )
  }

  return <LoginForm login={login}/>
}

Usage with class components

Since this library uses hooks you have to implement a wrapper to use with class components. Beneath you can find an example of how to use this library with class components, using a custom wrapper:

import React from 'react';
import {
  useFlag,
  useUnleashClient,
  useUnleashContext,
  useVariant,
  useFlagsStatus,
} from '@unleash/proxy-client-react';

interface IUnleashClassFlagProvider {
  render: (props: any) => React.ReactNode;
  flagName: string;
}

export const UnleashClassFlagProvider = ({
  render,
  flagName,
}: IUnleashClassFlagProvider) => {
  const enabled = useFlag(flagName);
  const variant = useVariant(flagName);
  const client = useUnleashClient();

  const updateContext = useUnleashContext();
  const { flagsReady, flagsError } = useFlagsStatus();

  const isEnabled = () => {
    return enabled;
  };

  const getVariant = () => {
    return variant;
  };

  const getClient = () => {
    return client;
  };

  const getUnleashContextSetter = () => {
    return updateContext;
  };

  const getFlagsStatus = () => {
    return { flagsReady, flagsError };
  };

  return (
    <>
      {render({
        isEnabled,
        getVariant,
        getClient,
        getUnleashContextSetter,
        getFlagsStatus,
      })}
    </>
  );
};

Wrap your components like so:

<UnleashClassFlagProvider
  flagName="demoApp.step1"
  render={({ isEnabled, getClient }) => (
    <MyClassComponent isEnabled={isEnabled} getClient={getClient} />
  )}
/>

React Native

localStorage

IMPORTANT: This no longer comes included in the unleash-proxy-client-js library. You will need to install the storage adapter for your preferred storage solution.

Because React Native doesn't run in a web browser, it doesn't have access to the localStorage API. Instead, you need to tell Unleash to use your specific storage provider. The most common storage provider for React Native is AsyncStorage. To configure it, add the following property to your configuration object:

const config = {
  storageProvider: {
    save: (name, data) => AsyncStorage.setItem(name, JSON.stringify(data)),
    get: async (name) => {
      const data = await AsyncStorage.getItem(name);
      return data ? JSON.parse(data) : undefined;
    },
  },
};

startTransition

If your version of React Native doesn't support startTransition, you can provide fallback implementation:

  <FlagProvider startTransition={fn => fn()} ></FlagProvider>

Migration guide

Upgrade path from v1 -> v2

If you were previously using the built in Async storage used in the unleash-proxy-client-js, this no longer comes bundled with the library. You will need to install the storage adapter for your preferred storage solution. Otherwise there are no breaking changes.

Upgrade path from v2 -> v3

Previously the unleash client was bundled as dependency directly in this library. It's now changed to a peer dependency and listed as an external.

In v2 there was only one distribution based on the fact that webpack polyfilled the necessary features in v4. This is no longer the case in webpack v5. We now provide two distribution builds, one for the server and one for the client - and use the browser field in the npm package to hint module builders about which version to use. The default dist/index.js file points to the node version, while the web build is located at dist/index.browser.js

Upgrading should be as easy as running yarn again with the new version, but we made the made bump regardless to be safe. Note: If you are not able to resolve the peer dependency on unleash-proxy-client you might need to run npm install unleash-proxy-client

Upgrade path from v3 -> v4

startClient option has been simplified. Now it will also work if you don't pass custom client with it. It defaults to true.

Note on v4.0.0:

The major release is driven by Node14 end of life and represents no other changes. From this version onwards we do not guarantee that this library will work server side with Node 14.

Design philosophy

This feature flag SDK is designed according to our design philosophy. You can read more about that here.