Go Server SDK
Getting Started
Create an Account
To work with the SDK, you will need a Statsig account. If you don't yet have an account, you can sign up for a free one here. You could skip this for now, but you will need an SDK key and some gates/experiments to use with the SDK in just a minute.
Installation
In your go.mod, add a dependency on the most recent version of the SDK:
require (
github.com/statsig-io/go-sdk v1.1.1
)
Or with the go get
CLI:
go get github.com/statsig-io/go-sdk@v1.1.1
See the Releases tab in GitHub for the latest versions.
Initialize the SDK
After installation, you will need to initialize the SDK using a Server Secret Key from the statsig console.
info
Do NOT embed your Server Secret Key in client side applications, or expose it in any external facing documents. However, if you accidentally exposed it, you can create a new one in Statsig console.
options
that allows you to pass in a StatsigOptions to customize the SDK.import (
statsig "github.com/statsig-io/go-sdk"
)
statsig.Initialize("server-secret-key")
// Or, if you want to initialize with certain options
statsig.InitializeWithOptions("server-secret-key", &Options{Environment: Environment{Tier: "staging"}})
initialize
will perform a network request. After initialize
completes, virtually all SDK operations will be synchronous (See Evaluating Feature Gates in the Statsig SDK). The SDK will fetch updates from Statsig in the background, independently of your API calls.Working with the SDK
Checking a Gate
Now that your SDK is initialized, let's fetch a Feature Gate. Feature Gates can be used to create logic branches in code that can be rolled out to different users from the Statsig Console. Gates are always CLOSED or OFF (think return false;
) by default.
From this point on, all APIs will require you to specify the user (see Statsig user) associated with the request. For example, check a gate for a certain user like this:
user := statsig.User{UserID: "some_user_id"}
feature := statsig.CheckGate(user, "use_new_feature")
if feature {
// Gate is on, enable new feature
} else {
// Gate is off
}
Reading a Dynamic Config
Feature Gates can be very useful for simple on/off switches, with optional but advanced user targeting. However, if you want to be able send a different set of values (strings, numbers, and etc.) to your clients based on specific user attributes, e.g. country, Dynamic Configs can help you with that. The API is very similar to Feature Gates, but you get an entire json object you can configure on the server and you can fetch typed parameters from it. For example:
config := statsig.GetConfig(user, "awesome_product_details")
// The 2nd parameter is the default value to be used in case the given parameter name does not exist on
// the Dynamic Config object. This can happen when there is a typo, or when the user is offline and the
// value has not been cached on the client.
itemName := config.GetString("product_name", "Awesome Product v1");
double price = config.GetNumber("price", 10.0);
bool shouldDiscount = config.GetBool("discount", false);
// Or just get the whole json object backing this config if you prefer
json := config.Value
Getting an Layer/Experiment
Then we have Layers/Experiments, which you can use to run A/B/n experiments. We offer two APIs, but we recommend the use of layers to enable quicker iterations with parameter reuse.
// Values via getLayer
layer := Statsig.GetLayer(user, "user_promo_experiments");
promoTitle := layer.GetString("title", "Welcome to Statsig!");
discount := layer.GetDouble("discount", 0.1);
// or, via getExperiment
titleExperiment := Statsig.GetExperiment(user, "new_user_promo_title");
priceExperiment := Statsig.GetExperiment(user, "new_user_promo_price");
promoTitle := titleExperiment.GetString("title", "Welcome to Statsig!");
discount := priceExperiment.GetNumber("discount", 0.1);
...
price := msrp * (1 - discount);
Asynchronous APIs
We mentioned earlier that after calling initialize
most SDK APIs would run synchronously, so why are getConfig
and checkGate
asynchronous?
The main reason is that older versions of the SDK might not know how to interpret new types of gate conditions. In such cases the SDK will make an asynchronous call to our servers to fetch the result of a check. This can be resolved by upgrading the SDK, and we will warn you if this happens.
For more details, read our blog post about SDK evaluations. If you have any questions, please ask them in our Feedback Repository.
Logging an Event
Now that you have a Feature Gate or an Experiment set up, you may want to track some custom events and see how your new features or different experiment groups affect these events. This is super easy with Statsig - simply call the Log Event API and specify the user and event name to log; you additionally provide some value and/or an object of metadata to be logged together with the event:
statsig.LogEvent(Event{
User: user,
EventName: "add_to_cart",
Value: "SKU_12345",
Metadata: map[string]string{"price": "9.99","item_name": "diet_coke_48_pack"},
})
Statsig User
When calling APIs that require a user, you should pass as much information as possible in order to take advantage of advanced gate and config conditions (like country or OS/browser level checks), and correctly measure impact of your experiments on your metrics/events. The userID
field is required because it's needed to provide a consistent experience for a given user (click here to understand further why it's important to always provide a userID).
Besides userID
, we also have email
, ip
, userAgent
, country
, locale
and appVersion
as top-level fields on StatsigUser. In addition, you can pass any key-value pairs in an object/dictionary to the custom
field and be able to create targeting based on them.
Private Attributes
Have sensitive user PII data that should not be logged? No problem, we have a solution for it! On the StatsigUser object we also have a field called privateAttributes
, which is a simple object/dictionary that you can use to set private user attributes. Any attribute set in privateAttributes
will only be used for evaluation/targeting, and removed from any logs before they are sent to Statsig server.
For example, if you have feature gates that should only pass for users with emails ending in "@statsig.com", but do not want to log your users' email addresses to Statsig, you can simply add the key-value pair { email: "my_user@statsig.com" }
to privateAttributes
on the user and that's it!
Statsig Options
You can specify optional parameters with options
when initializing using InitializeWithOptions()
type Options struct {
API string `json:"api"`
Environment Environment `json:"environment"`
LocalMode bool `json:"localMode"`
ConfigSyncInterval time.Duration
IDListSyncInterval time.Duration
BootstrapValues string
RulesUpdatedCallback func(rules string, time int64)
}
- Environment: default nil
- An object you can use to set environment variables that apply to all of your users in the same session and will be used for targeting purposes.
- The most common usage is to set the environment tier (string), and have feature gates pass/fail for specific environments. The accepted values are "production", "staging" and "development".
- Environment: default nil
- An object you can use to set environment variables that apply to all of your users in the same session and will be used for targeting purposes.
- The most common usage is to set the environment tier (string), and have feature gates pass/fail for specific environments. The accepted values are "production", "staging" and "development".
- LocalMode: default false
- Disables all network requests from the SDK, so it will only return default values. Useful in tests/non production environments.
- ConfigSyncInterval: default 10 seconds
- The interval to poll for gate/experiment/config changes.
- IDListSyncInterval: default 1 minute
- The interval to poll for ID list changes.
- BootstrapValues: default nil
- A string that represents all rules for all feature gates, dynamic configs and experiments. It can be provided to bootstrap the Statsig server SDK at initialization in case your server runs into network issue or Statsig server is down temporarily.
- RulesUpdatedCallback: default nil
- The callback that gets invoked whenever the rulesets are updated. It's called with a JSON string that represents the rulesets, and a timestamp for when the rules were updated.
Shutting Statsig Down
Because we batch and periodically flush events, some events may not have been sent when your app/server shuts down.
To make sure all logged events are properly flushed, you should tell Statsig to shutdown when your app/server is closing:
statsig.Shutdown()
Local Overrides v1.3.0+
If you want to locally override gates/configs/experiments/layers, there are a set of override APIs as follows. Coupling this with StatsigOptions.localMode can be useful when writing unit tests.
func OverrideGate(gate string, val bool)
func OverrideConfig(config string, val map[string]interface{})
note
- These only apply locally - they do not update definitions in the Statsig console or elsewhere.
- The local override API is not designed to be a full mock. They are only a convenient way to override the value of the gate/config/etc.
FAQ
How do I run experiments for logged out users?
See the guide on device level experiments
How can I mock Statsig in tests
We recommend using the Local Override APIs in v1.3.0+, in combination with the LocalMode
option in StatsigOptions
to force gate/config values in test environments and remove network access to statsig servers.
For example:
c := NewClientWithOptions(secret, &Options{LocalMode: true})
user := User{
UserID: "123",
}
gateDefault := c.CheckGate(user, "any_gate")
// "any_gate" is false by default
c.OverrideGate("any_gate", true)
// "any_gate" is now true
See also https://github.com/statsig-io/go-sdk/blob/main/overrides_test.go
Reference
StatsigUser
// User specific attributes for evaluating Feature Gates, Experiments, and DyanmicConfigs
//
// NOTE: UserID or a customID is **required** - see https://docs.statsig.com/messages/serverRequiredUserID
// PrivateAttributes are only used for user targeting/grouping in feature gates, dynamic configs,
// experiments and etc; they are omitted in logs.
type User struct {
UserID string `json:"userID"`
Email string `json:"email"`
IpAddress string `json:"ip"`
UserAgent string `json:"userAgent"`
Country string `json:"country"`
Locale string `json:"locale"`
AppVersion string `json:"appVersion"`
Custom map[string]interface{} `json:"custom"`
PrivateAttributes map[string]interface{} `json:"privateAttributes"`
StatsigEnvironment map[string]string `json:"statsigEnvironment"`
CustomIDs map[string]string `json:"customIDs"`
}
StatsigOptions
// Advanced options for configuring the Statsig SDK
type Options struct {
API string
Environment environment
LocalMode bool
ConfigSyncInterval time.Duration
IDListSyncInterval time.Duration
LoggingInterval time.Duration
LoggingMaxBufferSize int
BootstrapValues string
RulesUpdatedCallback func(rules string, time int64)
InitTimeout time.Duration
DataAdapter IDataAdapter
}
Event
type Event struct {
EventName string `json:"eventName"`
User User `json:"user"`
Value string `json:"value"`
Metadata map[string]string `json:"metadata"`
Time int64 `json:"time"`
}
DataAdapter
/**
* An adapter for implementing custom storage of config specs.
* Can be used to bootstrap Statsig (priority over bootstrapValues if both provided)
* Also useful for backing up cached data
*/
type IDataAdapter interface {
/**
* Returns the data stored for a specific key
*/
get(key string) string
/**
* Updates data stored for each key
*/
set(key string, value string)
/**
* Startup tasks to run before any get/set calls can be made
*/
initialize()
/**
* Cleanup tasks to run when statsig is shutdown
*/
shutdown()
}