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Adds a bit more general background, intro to concepts, and guidelines about what to use FF for
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rayafratkina authored Oct 25, 2024
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Expand Up @@ -20,56 +20,53 @@ One example of invalid use cases are settings used during the `setup` lifecycle
if an HTTP route is registered or not. Instead, you should always register the route, and return `404 - Not found` in the route
handler if the feature flag returns a _disabled_ state.

In summary, Feature flagging is best suited for
- Phased rollout of the features (either to a specific customer, a subset of customers, or a % of overall users)
- Feature experiementation

Feature flagging is NOT suitable for
- Applying feature availability for licensing and/or tiers
- Restricting or applying customer entitlement to specific GA features

For a code example, refer to the [Feature Flags Example plugin](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/blob/main/examples/feature_flags_example/README.md)

## Registering a feature flag
## Key concepts

> [!IMPORTANT]
> At the moment, we follow a manual process to manage our feature flags. Refer to [this repo](https://github.com/elastic/kibana-feature-flags) to learn more about our current internal process.
> Our goal is to achieve the _gitops_ approach detailed below. But, at the moment, it's not available, and you can skip it if you want.
### Feature Flag

Kibana follows a _gitops_ approach when managing feature flags. To declare a feature flag, add your flags definitions in
your plugin's `server/index.ts` file:
A config key that defines a set of [variations](#variations) that will be resolved at runtime when the app calls [the evaluation APIs](https://docs.elastic.dev/kibana-dev-docs/tutorials/feature-flags-service#evaluating-feature-flags). The variation is decided at runtime based on static binary state (ON -> `variationA` vs. OFF -> `variationB`), or via [evaluation/segmentation rules](#evaluationsegmentation-rules).

```typescript
// <plugin>/server/index.ts
import type { FeatureFlagDefinitions } from '@kbn/core-feature-flags-server';
import type { PluginInitializerContext } from '@kbn/core-plugins-server';

export const featureFlags: FeatureFlagDefinitions = [
{
key: 'myPlugin.myCoolFeature',
name: 'My cool feature',
description: 'Enables the cool feature to auto-hide the navigation bar',
tags: ['my-plugin', 'my-service', 'ui'],
variationType: 'boolean',
variations: [
{
name: 'On',
description: 'Auto-hides the bar',
value: true,
},
{
name: 'Off',
description: 'Static always-on',
value: false,
},
],
},
{...},
];

export async function plugin(initializerContext: PluginInitializerContext) {
const { FeatureFlagsExamplePlugin } = await import('./plugin');
return new FeatureFlagsExamplePlugin(initializerContext);
}
```
### Variations

All the potential values that a feature flag can return based on the [evaluation rules](#evaluationsegmentation-rules). A feature flag should define at least 2 variations: the ON and the OFF states. The typical use case sets the OFF state to match the `fallback` value provided to [the evaluation APIs](https://docs.elastic.dev/kibana-dev-docs/tutorials/feature-flags-service#evaluating-feature-flags), although it's not a hard requirement and Kibana contributors might require special configurations.

### Evaluation/Segmentation rules

Set of rules used to evaluate the variation to resolve, based on the [evaluation context](#evaluation-context) provided by the app.

The rules can vary from a percentage rollout per evaluation context, or more complex IF...THEN filters and clauses.

Refer to the [Evaluation Context guide's examples](./evaluation-context.md#examples) for some typical scenarios.

### Evaluation Context

Kibana reports a set of properties specific to each ECH deployment/Serverless project to help define the [segmentation rules](#evaluationsegmentation-rules). A list of the currently reported context properties can be found in the [Evaluation Context guide](https://github.com/elastic/kibana-feature-flags/blob/main/docs/evaluation-context.md).

### Feature Flag Code References

In the Kibana repo we run a [GH Action](https://github.com/elastic/kibana/actions/workflows/launchdarkly-code-references.yml) that links existing Feature Flags to their code references. This helps us figure out which flags have been removed from the code and, which ones are still being used.

> :information_source: New flags might take a few moments to be updated with their code references.
> The job runs on every commit to the `main` branch of the [Kibana repository](https://github.com/elastic/kibana), so the wait can take from a few minutes to a few hours, depending on the Kibana repo's activity.
## Registering a feature flag

After merging your PR, the CI will create/update the flags in our third-party feature flags provider.
At the moment, we follow a manual process to manage our feature flags. Refer to [this repo](https://github.com/elastic/kibana-feature-flags) to learn more about our current internal process.
Our goal is to achieve a _gitops_ approach eventually. But, at the moment, it's not available.

### Deprecation/removal strategy

When your code doesn't use the feature flag anymore, it is recommended to clean up the feature flags when possible.
When your code doesn't use the feature flag anymore, it is recommended to clean up the feature flags.
There are a few considerations to take into account when performing this clean-up:

1. Always deprecate first, remove after
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