Feature Flags on Android At BlaBlaCar

Have you ever asked yourself, when submitting an app to the playstore and seeing a crash rising on your crash report : « If only I could deactivate this feature so I could correct the crash without impacting the users » ? Well, wonder no more ! There is a solution for this, and it’s called « feature toggle ». Some well-known websites are using it, but few on their mobile apps. At BlaBlaCar, we’ve been bold and implemented it inside our mobile apps.The main purpose of this improvement is to be able to activate or deactivate little features inside the app on the fly, without resubmitting an apk on the playstore. It can be used in case of crashes or when rollouting new features to a small group of users. In this presentation I will explain you how we defined our vision for this system, designed and implemented it inside our Android app.

Transcript

1. Flaggr
2. Alexandra Tritz Android dev @LexouThirteen #droidconzg
3. What is ?
5. 120€
6. 30€ 30€ 30€ 30€
8. User Feedback
9. What is a feature flag ?
10. A 'Feature Flag' (or Feature Toggle) is the ability to turn features (sub-sections) of your application on/off at a moments notice.
14. Feature flags @
15. Our needs
16. ➔ Merge my feature and put it in prod even if it’s not release time
17. ➔ Disable a feature in production without submission
18. ➔ Rollout a feature (locale, axis…)
20. Android side
25. Architecture
30. Caching
41. That’s awesome !
42. How can I use it ?
44. Benefits
45. ➔ No submission needed
46. ➔ Progressive rollout
47. ➔ User feedbacks
48. Library
49. ➔ External module ➔ Agnostic to Input, storage ➔ Generic Types ➔ Limited API
50. github.com/blablacar/flaggr-android
52. Slides available at : bit.ly/BBCFlaggr Leave feedbacks @LexouThirteen Follow us @BlaBlaCarTech Thank you