Enabling / Disabling Features in a Laravel App - laravel

Question

I'm building a Laravel app, which has a number of various features. I want to be able to enable or disable them depending on a particular domain's requirement. Currently, I have in my config a series of flags such as:
'is_feature_1_enabled' => true,
'is_feature_2_enabled' => false,
... and so on.
Then in my controllers and views, I check those config values to see whether or not I should be displaying something, allowing certain actions, etc. My app is starting to get polluted with these kinds of checks everywhere.
Is there a best practice method of managing features in a Laravel app?

Answer 1

This is technically called feature flags - https://martinfowler.com/articles/feature-toggles.html
depends on your requirements, flags in config/database, rollout, etc...
But it's basically if's in code and cannot be clean.
Laravel packages:
https://github.com/alfred-nutile-inc/laravel-feature-flag
https://github.com/francescomalatesta/laravel-feature
Some services:
https://launchdarkly.com/
https://bullet-train.io/
https://configcat.com/
Also look at https://marketingplatform.google.com/about/optimize/ for frontend.

Answer 2

I've encountered the same problem when I tried to implement multiple hotel providers.
What I did was using service container.
first you will create class for each domain With his features:
like Doman1.php ,Domain2.php
then inside each one of those you will add your logic.
then you gonna use binding in your app service provider to bind the domain with class to use.
$this->app->bind('Domain1',function (){
return new Domain1();
});
$this->app->bind('Domain2',function (){
return new Domain2();
});
Note you can use general class that holds the features goes with all domains then use that general class in your classes
Finally in your controller you can check your domain then to use the class you gonna use
app(url('/'))->methodName();

Answer 3

Look like you are hard coding things based on config values to enable or disable certain features. I recommend you to control things based on named routes rather than config value.
Group all the route as a whole or by feature wise.
Define name for all routes
Control the enable/disable activity by route name and record in database
Use Laravel middleware to check whether a particular feature is enabled or disabled by getting the current route name from request object and matching it with the database..
so you will not have the same conditions repeating every where and bloat your code..
here is a sample code show you how to retrieve all routes, and you can match the route group name to further process to match your situation.
Route::get('routes', function() {
$routeCollection = Route::getRoutes();
echo "<table >";
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td width='10%'><h4>HTTP Method</h4></td>";
echo "<td width='10%'><h4>Route</h4></td>";
echo "<td width='80%'><h4>Corresponding Action</h4></td>";
echo "</tr>";
foreach ($routeCollection as $value) {
echo "<tr>";
echo "<td>" . $value->getMethods()[0] . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $value->getPath() . "</td>";
echo "<td>" . $value->getName() . "</td>";
echo "</tr>";
}
echo "</table>";
});
and here is a sample middleware handler where you can check whether a particular feature is active by matching with what you have already stored in your database..
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
if(Helper::isDisabled($request->route()->getName())){
abort(403,'This feature is disabled.');
}
return $next($request);
}

Answer 4

Assuming that those features are only needed for HTTP requests.
I would create a default Features base class with all the default flags:
Class Features {
// Defaults
protected $feature1_enabled = true;
protected $feature2_enabled = true;
public function isFeature1Enabled(): bool
{
return $this->feature1_enabled;
}
public function isFeature2Enabled(): bool
{
return $this->feature2_enabled;
}
}
Then I would extend that class for each Domain and set the overrides that are needed for that domain:
Class Domain1 extends Features {
// override
protected $feature1_enabled = false;
}
Then create a Middleware to bind the Features Class to the container:
class AssignFeatureByDomain
{
/**
* Handle an incoming request.
*
* #param \Illuminate\Http\Request $request
* #param \Closure $next
* #return mixed
*/
public function handle($request, Closure $next)
{
switch ($_SERVER['HTTP_HOST']) {
case 'domain1':
app()->bind(Features::class, Domain1::class);
break;
default:
abort(401, 'Domain rejected');
}
return $next($request);
}
}
Don't forget to attach this middleware to your routes: to a group or for each route.
After this you can TypeHint your Features class in your controllers:
public function index(Request $request, Features $features)
{
if ($features->isFeature1Enabled()) {
//
}
}

Answer 5

Laravel is great with this, you can even store your features in db, and create a relation between the domain.
I would recommend to use Gates and Policies, which will give you better control in your controllers and blade templates. This means you register the gates from your db or hard code them.
For example if you have export products feature with a button in your system and you want to make that feature available to some users you can register gates with business logic.
//Only admins can export products
Gate::define('export-products', function ($user) {
return $user->isAdmin;
});
Then you can do the following in the controllers
<?php
namespace App\Http\Controllers;
use App\Product;
use Illuminate\Http\Request;
use App\Http\Controllers\Controller;
class ProductsController extends Controller
{
/**
* Export products
*
* #param Request $request
* #param Post $post
* #return Response
* #throws \Illuminate\Auth\Access\AuthorizationException
*/
public function export(Request $request)
{
$this->authorize('export-products');
// The current user can export products
}
}
Here is an example for your blade templates:
#can('export-products', $post)
<!-- The Current User Can export products -->
#endcan
#cannot('export-products')
<!-- The Current User Can't export products -->
#endcannot
more information available at https://laravel.com/docs/5.8/authorization

Answer 6

Interesting case you have here. It might be interesting to look into a Feature interface or abstract class that contains a few methods you generally need.
interface Feature
{
public function isEnabled(): bool;
public function render(): string;
// Not entirely sure if this would be a best practice but the idea is to be
// able to call $feature->execute(...) on any feature.
public function execute(...);
...
}
You could even devide these into ExecutableFeature and RenderableFeature.
Further on some kind of factory class could be made to make life easier.
// Call class factory.
Feature::make('some_feature')->render();
...->isEnabled();
// Make helper method.
feature('some_feature')->render();
// Make a blade directives.
#feature('some_feature')
#featureEnabled('some_feature')

Answer 7

What I did in my case was creating a new table on the database, you could call it Domains for instance.
Add all the specific features, those which could be shown on some domains but not in the rest, as columns for that table as bit for boolean values. Like, in my case, allow_multiple_bookings, use_company_card... whatever.
Then, consider creating a class Domain and its respective repository, and just ask these values on your code, trying to push as much as possible that logic into your domain (your model, application services, etc).
For instance, I would not do the check on the controller method for RequestBooking if the domain which is requesting a booking can request only one or more.
Instead I do it on a RequestBookingValidatorService which can check if the booking datetime has passed, the user has an enabled credit card, ... or the Domain which this action comes from is allowed to request more than one booking (and then if it already has any).
This adds the convenience of readability, as you have pushed this decision to your application services. Also, I find that whenever I need a new feature I can use Laravel (or Symfony) migrations to add that feature on the table and I could even update its rows (your domains) with the values I want on the same commit I coded.