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This PR implements the first version of a suggested unification (and documentation) of the errors that we return from the API today. The goal is for this to be the first step towards the error type defined in this internal [linear task](https://linear.app/unleash/issue/1-629/define-the-error-type 'Define the new API error type'). ## The state of things today As things stand, we currently have no (or **very** little) documentation of the errors that are returned from the API. We mention error codes, but never what the errors may contain. Second, there is no specified format for errors, so what they return is arbitrary, and based on ... Who knows? As a result, we have multiple different errors returned by the API depending on what operation you're trying to do. What's more, with OpenAPI validation in the mix, it's absolutely possible for you to get two completely different error objects for operations to the same endpoint. Third, the errors we do return are usually pretty vague and don't really provide any real help to the user. "You don't have the right permissions". Great. Well what permissions do I need? And how would I know? "BadDataError". Sick. Why is it bad? ... You get it. ## What we want to achieve The ultimate goal is for error messages to serve both humans and machines. When the user provides bad data, we should tell them what parts of the data are bad and what they can do to fix it. When they don't have the right permissions, we should tell them what permissions they need. Additionally, it would be nice if we could provide an ID for each error instance, so that you (or an admin) can look through the logs and locate he incident. ## What's included in **this** PR? This PR does not aim to implement everything above. It's not intended to magically fix everything. Its goal is to implement the necessary **breaking** changes, so that they can be included in v5. Changing error messages is a slightly grayer area than changing APIs directly, but changing the format is definitely something I'd consider breaking. So this PR: - defines a minimal version of the error type defined in the [API error definition linear task](https://linear.app/unleash/issue/1-629/define-the-error-type). - aims to catch all errors we return today and wrap them in the error type - updates tests to match the new expectations. An important point: because we are cutting v5 very soon and because work for this wasn't started until last week, the code here isn't necessarily very polished. But it doesn't need to be. The internals can be as messy as we want, as long as the API surface is stable. That said, I'm very open to feedback about design and code completeness, etc, but this has intentionally been done quickly. Please also see my inline comments on the changes for more specific details. ### Proposed follow-ups As mentioned, this is the first step to implementing the error type. The public API error type only exposes `id`, `name`, and `message`. This is barely any more than most of the previous messages, but they are now all using the same format. Any additional properties, such as `suggestion`, `help`, `documentationLink` etc can be added as features without breaking the current format. This is an intentional limitation of this PR. Regarding additional properties: there are some error responses that must contain extra properties. Some of these are documented in the types of the new error constructor, but not all. This includes `path` and `type` properties on 401 errors, `details` on validation errors, and more. Also, because it was put together quickly, I don't yet know exactly how we (as developers) would **prefer** to use these new error messages within the code, so the internal API (the new type, name, etc), is just a suggestion. This can evolve naturally over time if (based on feedback and experience) without changing the public API. ## Returning multiple errors Most of the time when we return errors today, we only return a single error (even if many things are wrong). AJV, the OpenAPI integration we use does have a setting that allows it to return all errors in a request instead of a single one. I suggest we turn that on, but that we do it in a separate PR (because it updates a number of other snapshots). When returning errors that point to `details`, the objects in the `details` now contain a new `description` property. This "deprecates" the `message` property. Due to our general deprecation policy, this should be kept around for another full major and can be removed in v6. ```json { "name": "BadDataError", "message": "Something went wrong. Check the `details` property for more information." "details": [{ "message": "The .params property must be an object. You provided an array.", "description": "The .params property must be an object. You provided an array.", }] } ``` |
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About Unleash
Unleash is an open source feature management solution. It improves the workflow of your development team and leads to quicker software delivery. Unleash increases efficiency and gives teams full control of how and when they enable new functionality for end users. Unleash lets teams ship code to production in smaller releases whenever they want.
Feature toggles make it easy to test how your code works with real production data without the fear that you'll accidentally break your users' experience. It also helps your team work on multiple features in parallel without each maintaining an separate feature branch.
Unleash is the largest open source solution for feature flagging on GitHub. There's 12 official client and server SDKs and 10+ community SDKs available; you can even make your own if you want to. You can use Unleash with any language and any framework.
Get started in 2 steps
1. Start Unleash
With git and docker installed, it's easy to get started:
Run this script:
git clone git@github.com:Unleash/unleash.git
cd unleash
docker compose up -d
Then point your browser to localhost:4242 and log in using:
- username:
admin - password:
unleash4all
If you'd rather run the source code in this repo directly via Node.js, see the step-by-step instructions to get up and running in the contributing guide.
2. Connect your SDK
Find your preferred SDK in our list of official SDKs and import it into your project. Follow the setup guides for your specific SDK.
If you use the docker compose file from the previous step, here's the configuration details you'll need to get going:
- For front-end SDKs, use:
- URL:
http://localhost:4242/api/frontend/ clientKey:default:development.unleash-insecure-frontend-api-token
- URL:
- For server-side SDKs, use:
- Unleash API URL:
http://localhost:4242/api/ - API token:
default:development.unleash-insecure-api-token
- Unleash API URL:
If you use a different setup, your configuration details will most likely also be different.
Check a feature toggle
Checking the state of a feature toggle in your code is easy! The syntax will vary depending on your language, but all you need is a simple function call to check whether a toggle is available. Here's how it might look in Java:
if (unleash.isEnabled("AwesomeFeature")) {
// do new, flashy thing
} else {
// do old, boring stuff
}
Run Unleash on a service?
If you don't want to run Unleash locally, we also provide easy deployment setups for Heroku and Digital Ocean:
Configure and run Unleash anywhere
The above sections show you how to get up and running quickly and easily. When you're ready to start configuring and customizing Unleash for your own environment, check out the documentation for getting started with self-managed deployments, Unleash configuration options, or running Unleash locally via docker.
Online demo
Try out the Unleash online demo.
Community and help — sharing is caring
We know that learning a new tool can be hard and time-consuming. We have a growing community that loves to help out. Please don't hesitate to reach out for help.
💬 Join Unleash on Slack if you want ask open questions about Unleash, feature toggling or discuss these topics in general.
💻 Create a GitHub issue if you have found a bug or have ideas on how to improve Unleash.
📚 Visit the documentation for more in-depth descriptions, how-to guides, and more.
Contribute to Unleash
Building Unleash is a collaborative effort, and we owe a lot of gratitude to many smart and talented individuals. Building it together with community ensures that we build a product that solves real problems for real people. We'd love to have your help too: Please feel free to open issues or provide pull requests.
Check out the CONTRIBUTING.md file for contribution guidelines and the Unleash developer guide for tips on environment setup, running the tests, and running Unleash from source.
Contributors
Features our users love
Flexibility and adaptability
- Get an easy overview of all feature toggles across all your environments, applications and services
- Use included activation strategies for most common use cases, or use a custom activation strategy to support any need you might have
- Organise feature toggles by feature toggle tags
- Canary releases / gradual rollouts
- Targeted releases: release features to specific users, IPs, or hostnames
- Kill switches
- A/B testing
- 2 environments
- Out-of-the-box integrations with popular tools (Slack, Microsoft Teams, Datadog) + integrate with anything with webhooks
- Dashboard for managing technical debt and stale toggles
- API-first: everything can be automated. No exceptions.
- 12 official client SDKs, and ten community-contributed client SDKs
- Run it via Docker with the official Docker image or as a pure Node.js application
Security and performance
- Privacy by design (GDPR and Schrems II). End-user data never leaves your application.
- Audit logs
- Enforce OWASP's secure headers via the strict HTTPS-only mode
- Flexible hosting options: host it on premise or in the cloud (any cloud)
- Scale the Unleash Proxy independently of the Unleash server to support any number of front-end clients without overloading your Unleash instance
Looking for more features?
If you're looking for one of the following features, please take a look at our Pro and Enterprise plans:
- role-based access control (RBAC)
- single sign-on (SSO)
- more environments
- feature toggles project support
- advanced segmentation
- additional strategy constraints
- tighter security
- more hosting options (we can even host it for you!)
Architecture
Read more in the system overview section of the Unleash documentation.
Unleash SDKs
To connect your application to Unleash you'll need to use a client SDK for your programming language.
Official server-side SDKs:
Official front-end SDKs:
The front-end SDKs connects via the Unleash Proxy in order to ensure privacy, scalability and security.
- Android Proxy SDK
- Flutter Proxy SDK
- iOS Proxy SDK
- JavaScript Proxy SDK
- React Proxy SDK
- Svelte Proxy SDK
- Vue Proxy SDK
Community SDKs:
If none of the official SDKs fit your need, there's also a number of community-developed SDKs where you might find an implementation for your preferred language (such as Elixir, Dart, Clojure, and more).
Users of Unleash
Unleash is trusted by thousands of companies all over the world.
Proud Open-Source users: (send us a message if you want to add your logo here)
Migration guides
Unleash has evolved significantly over the past few years, and we know how hard it can be to keep software up to date. If you're using the current major version, upgrading shouldn't be an issue. If you're on a previous major version, check out the Unleash migration guide!
Want to know more about Unleash?
Videos and podcasts
- The Unleash YouTube channel
- Feature toggles — Why and how to add to your software — freeCodeCamp (YouTube)
- Feature flags with Unleash — The Code Kitchen (podcast)
- Feature Flags og Unleash med Fredrik Oseberg — Utviklerpodden (podcast; Norwegian)
Articles and more
- The Unleash Blog
- Designing the Rust Unleash API client — Medium
- FeatureToggle by Martin Fowler
- Feature toggling transient errors in load tests — nrkbeta
- An Interview with Ivar of Unleash — Console
- Unleash your features gradually, slideshow/presentation by Ivar, the creator of Unleash