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---
title: Unleash introductory overview
---
2022-08-20 07:31:21 +02:00
One of the most important aspects of the architecture to understand is that feature toggles _are evaluated in a client SDKs_ which runs as part of your application. This makes toggle evaluations super-fast (_we're talking nano-seconds_), scalable and resilient against network disturbances. In order to achieve this Unleash compromises a small update-delay when you change your toggle configurations until it is fully propagated to your application (in terms of seconds and is configurable).
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If you want more details you can read about [our unique architecture ](https://www.getunleash.io/blog/our-unique-architecture ).
### Unleash Server {#unleash-server}
Before you can connect your application to Unleash you need a Unleash server. You have a few options available:
1. **Unleash Open-source**
refactor: move docs into new structure / fix links for SEO (#2416)
## What
This (admittedly massive) PR updates the "physical" documentation
structure and fixes url inconsistencies and SEO problems reported by
marketing. The main points are:
- remove or move directories : advanced, user_guide, deploy, api
- move the files contained within to the appropriate one of topics,
how-to, tutorials, or reference
- update internal doc links and product links to the content
- create client-side redirects for all the urls that have changed.
A number of the files have been renamed in small ways to better match
their url and to make them easier to find. Additionally, the top-level
api directory has been moved to /reference/api/legacy/unleash (see the
discussion points section for more on this).
## Why
When moving our doc structure to diataxis a while back, we left the
"physical' files lying where they were, because it didn't matter much to
the new structure. However, that did introduce some inconsistencies with
where you place docs and how we organize them.
There's also the discrepancies in whether urls us underscores or hyphens
(which isn't necessarily the same as their file name), which has been
annoying me for a while, but now has also been raised by marketing as an
issue in terms of SEO.
## Discussion points
The old, hand-written API docs have been moved from /api to
/reference/api/legacy/unleash. There _is_ a /reference/api/unleash
directory, but this is being populated by the OpenAPI plugin, and mixing
those could only cause trouble. However, I'm unsure about putting
/legacy/ in the title, because the API isn't legacy, the docs are. Maybe
we could use another path? Like /old-docs/ or something? I'd appreciate
some input on this.
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- [Docker ](../reference/deploy/getting-started.md )
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- [Helm Chart ](https://github.com/unleash/helm-charts/ )
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- [GitLab ](https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/operations/feature_flags.html#choose-a-client-library )
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2. **Unleash Enterprise**
- [Hosted Plans ](https://www.getunleash.io/plans )
- [Self-hosted ](https://www.getunleash.io/blog/self-host-your-feature-toggle-system )
### System Overview {#system-overview}
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2022-01-12 11:44:14 +01:00
refactor: move docs into new structure / fix links for SEO (#2416)
## What
This (admittedly massive) PR updates the "physical" documentation
structure and fixes url inconsistencies and SEO problems reported by
marketing. The main points are:
- remove or move directories : advanced, user_guide, deploy, api
- move the files contained within to the appropriate one of topics,
how-to, tutorials, or reference
- update internal doc links and product links to the content
- create client-side redirects for all the urls that have changed.
A number of the files have been renamed in small ways to better match
their url and to make them easier to find. Additionally, the top-level
api directory has been moved to /reference/api/legacy/unleash (see the
discussion points section for more on this).
## Why
When moving our doc structure to diataxis a while back, we left the
"physical' files lying where they were, because it didn't matter much to
the new structure. However, that did introduce some inconsistencies with
where you place docs and how we organize them.
There's also the discrepancies in whether urls us underscores or hyphens
(which isn't necessarily the same as their file name), which has been
annoying me for a while, but now has also been raised by marketing as an
issue in terms of SEO.
## Discussion points
The old, hand-written API docs have been moved from /api to
/reference/api/legacy/unleash. There _is_ a /reference/api/unleash
directory, but this is being populated by the OpenAPI plugin, and mixing
those could only cause trouble. However, I'm unsure about putting
/legacy/ in the title, because the API isn't legacy, the docs are. Maybe
we could use another path? Like /old-docs/ or something? I'd appreciate
some input on this.
2022-11-22 10:05:30 +01:00
- [**The Unleash API** ](/reference/api/unleash ) - The Unleash instance. This is where you create feature toggles, configure activation strategies, and parameters, etc. The service holding all feature toggles and their configurations. Configurations declare which activation strategies to use and which parameters they should get.
- **The Unleash admin UI** - The bundled web interface for interacting with the Unleash instance. Manage toggles, define strategies, look at metrics, and much more. Use the UI to [create feature toggles ](how-to/how-to-create-feature-toggles.md ), [manage project access roles ](../how-to/how-to-create-and-assign-custom-project-roles.md ), [create API tokens ](how-to/how-to-create-api-tokens.mdx ), and more.
- [**Unleash SDKs** ](../reference/sdks/index.md ) - Unleash SDKs integrate into your applications and get feature configurations from the Unleash API. Use them to check whether features are enabled or disabled and to send metrics to the Unleash API. [See all our SDKs ](../reference/sdks/index.md )
Source proxy and Edge docs from GitHub (#3122)
## What
The main purpose of this PR is to
1. Delete the proxy docs in this repo and replace them with the proxy's
GitHub readme.
2. Add the docs for Unleash Edge.
### Detailed change description
This PR contains a lot of small changes in a large number of files. To
make it easier to get an overview, here's a detailed description of what
happens where:
#### In the `website/docs`directory
Except for the deletion of the proxy doc, all changes in this directory
are rewriting internal links, so that they point to the newly generated
document instead.
#### `package.json` and `yarn.lock`
When including the documentation for Edge, we also want to render the
mermaid diagrams it uses. Docusaurus supports this via a plugin. All
changes in these files are related to installing that plugin.
#### `docusaurus.config.js`
There's two types of changes in this file:
1. Mermaid-related changes: we ask docusaurus to render mermaid in
markdown files and add the plugin
2. Document generation. There's some rewrites to the sdk doc generation
plus an entirely new section that generates docs for Edge and the proxy
#### `sidebars.js`
Two things:
1. Add the edge docs
2. Move both the Edge and the proxy docs up a level, so that they're
directly under "reference docs" instead of nested inside "unleash
concepts".
#### In the `website/remote-content` directory
These are the remote content files. Previously, all of this lived only
in a `readme-fns.js` file, but with the introduction of Edge and proxy
docs, this has been moved into its own directory and refactored into
three files (`shared`, `sdks`, `edge-proxy`).
#### `custom.css`
Style updates to center mermaid diagrams and provide more space around
them.
#### In `static/img`
The image files that were included in the proxy doc and that have been
deleted.
## Why
For two reasons:
1. Reduce duplication for the proxy. Have one source of truth.
2. Add docs for edge.
## Discussion points and review wishes
This is a big PR, and I don't expect anyone to do a line-by-line review
of it, nor do I think that is particularly useful. Instead, I'd like to
ask reviewers to:
1. Visit the [documentation
preview](https://unleash-docs-git-docs-source-proxy-gh-unleash-team.vercel.app/reference/unleash-proxy)
and have a look at both the proxy docs and the Edge docs. Potentially
have a look at the SDK docs too to verify that everything still works.
2. Consider whether they think moving the proxy and edge docs up a level
(in the sidebar) makes sense.
3. Let me know what slug they'd prefer for the Edge docs. I've gone with
`unleash-edge` for now (so that it's
`docs.getunleash.io/reference/unleash-edge`), but we could potentially
also just use `edge`. WDYT?
4. Read through the detailed changes section.
5. Let me know if they have any other concerns or questions.
## Screenies
The new proxy doc:
The new edge doc:
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- [**The Unleash proxy** ](../generated/unleash-proxy.md ) - The Unleash proxy sits between front-end and native applications and the Unleash API. You can scale it independently of the Unleash API to handle large request rates without causing issues for the Unleash API.
2022-01-12 11:44:14 +01:00
refactor: move docs into new structure / fix links for SEO (#2416)
## What
This (admittedly massive) PR updates the "physical" documentation
structure and fixes url inconsistencies and SEO problems reported by
marketing. The main points are:
- remove or move directories : advanced, user_guide, deploy, api
- move the files contained within to the appropriate one of topics,
how-to, tutorials, or reference
- update internal doc links and product links to the content
- create client-side redirects for all the urls that have changed.
A number of the files have been renamed in small ways to better match
their url and to make them easier to find. Additionally, the top-level
api directory has been moved to /reference/api/legacy/unleash (see the
discussion points section for more on this).
## Why
When moving our doc structure to diataxis a while back, we left the
"physical' files lying where they were, because it didn't matter much to
the new structure. However, that did introduce some inconsistencies with
where you place docs and how we organize them.
There's also the discrepancies in whether urls us underscores or hyphens
(which isn't necessarily the same as their file name), which has been
annoying me for a while, but now has also been raised by marketing as an
issue in terms of SEO.
## Discussion points
The old, hand-written API docs have been moved from /api to
/reference/api/legacy/unleash. There _is_ a /reference/api/unleash
directory, but this is being populated by the OpenAPI plugin, and mixing
those could only cause trouble. However, I'm unsure about putting
/legacy/ in the title, because the API isn't legacy, the docs are. Maybe
we could use another path? Like /old-docs/ or something? I'd appreciate
some input on this.
2022-11-22 10:05:30 +01:00
To be super fast (_we're talking nano-seconds_), the [client SDK ](../reference/sdks/index.md ) caches all feature toggles and their current configuration in memory. The activation strategies are also implemented in the SDK. This makes it really fast to check if a toggle is on or off because it is just a simple function operating on local state, without the need to poll data from the database.
