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Setup the SDK
1
Install the SDK
If you are using Bundler, add the gem to your Gemfile from command line:or directly include it in your Gemfile and run Check out the latest versions on https://rubygems.org/gems/statsig
bundle install
:2
Initialize the SDK
After installation, you will need to initialize the SDK using a Server Secret Key from the Statsig console.For Puma, you should initialize Statsig within an For Passenger, you should initialize Statsig in your For Sidekiq, you should initialize Statsig in your If you are using Rails in combination with any of the above, you should be sure to initialize using the specific process lifecycle hooks exposed by the respective tool. You can initialize in multiple places, which should ensure the SDK is fully usable including all background processing.
Do NOT embed your Server Secret Key in client-side applications, or expose it in any external-facing documents. However, if you accidentally expose it, you can create a new one in the Statsig console.
Initializing Statsig in a Rails Application
If your application is using Rails, you should initialize Statsig inconfig/initializers/statsig.rb
:Initializing Statsig when using Unicorn, Puma, Passenger, or Sidekiq
For Unicorn, you should initialize Statsig within anafter_fork
hook in your unicorn.rb
config file:on_worker_boot
hook in your puma.rb
config file:config.ru
config file:sidekiq.rb
/server configuration file: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 Feature Flag/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 (thinkreturn 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:
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.Getting a 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.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 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. At least one identifier, either userID or a Custom ID, is required to provide a consistent experience for a given user (as explained here). BesidesuserID
, 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.
Note that while typing is lenient on the StatsigUser
object to allow you to pass in numbers, strings, arrays, objects, and potentially even enums or classes, the evaluation operators will only be able to operate on primitive types - mostly strings and numbers. While we attempt to smartly cast custom field types to match the operator, we cannot guarantee evaluation results for other types. For example, setting an array as a custom field will only ever be compared as a string - there is no operator to match a value in that array.
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 calledprivateAttributes
, 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
initialize()
takes an optional parameter options
in addition to the secret key that you can provide to customize the Statsig client. Here are the current options and we are always adding more to the list:
You can specify optional parameters with options
when initializing.
- environment: Hash, default
nil
- a Hash 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 “tier” (string), and have feature gates pass/fail for specific environments. The accepted values are “production”, “staging” and “development”, e.g.
StatsigOptions.New({ 'tier' => 'staging' })
.
- download_config_specs_url: String, default
"https://api.statsigcdn.com/v2/download_config_specs/"
- The url used specifically to call download_config_specs
- log_event_url: String, default
"https://statsigapi.net/v1/log_event"
- The url used specifically to call log_event
- get_id_lists_url: String, default
"https://statsigapi.net/v1/get_id_lists"
- The url used specifically to call get_id_lists
- rulesets_sync_interval: Number, default
10
- The interval (in seconds) to poll for changes to your Statsig configuration
- idlists_sync_interval: Number, default
60
- The interval (in seconds) to poll for changes to id lists
- disable_rulesets_sync: Boolean, default
false
- Disable background syncing for rulesets
- disable_idlists_sync: Boolean, default
false
- Disable background syncing for id lists
- logging_interval_seconds: Number, default
60
- How often to flush logs to Statsig
- logging_max_buffer_size: Number, default
1000
, can be set lower but anything over 1000 will be dropped on the server- The maximum number of events to batch before flushing logs to the server
- local_mode: Boolean, default
false
- Restricts the SDK to not issue any network requests and only respond with default values (or local overrides)
- bootstrap_values: String, 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.
- rules_updated_callback: function, default
nil
- A callback function that will be called anytime the rulesets are updated
- data_store: IDataStore, default
nil
- A class that extends IDataStore. Can be used to provide values from a common data store (like Redis) to initialize the Statsig SDK.
- idlist_threadpool_size: Number, default
3
- The number of threads allocated to syncing IDLists
- logger_threadpool_size: Number, default
3
- The number of threads allocated to posting event logs
- disable_diagnostics_logging: Boolean, default
false
- Should diagnostics be logged. These include performance metrics for initialize
- disable_sorbet_logging_handlers: Boolean, default
false
- Statsig utilizes Sorbet (https://sorbet.org) to ensure type safety of the SDK. This includes logging to console when errors are detected. You can disable this logging by setting this flag to true.
- network_timeout: Number, default
nil
- Maximum number of seconds to wait for a network call before timing out
- post_logs_retry_limit: Number, default
3
- Number of times to retry sending a batch of failed log events
- post_logs_retry_backoff: Number/Function, default
nil
- The number of seconds, or a function that returns the number of seconds based on the number of retries remaining which overrides the default backoff time between retries
- user_persistent_storage: IUserPersistentStorage, default
nil
- A storage adapter for persisted values. Can be used for sticky bucketing users in experiments. Implements Statsig::Interfaces::IUserPersistentStorage.
Shutdown
To gracefully shutdown the SDK and ensure all events are flushed:Client SDK Bootstrapping
The Statsig server SDK can be used to generate the initialization values for a client SDK. This is useful for server-side rendering (SSR) or when you want to pre-fetch values for a client.Local Overrides
You can override the values returned by the SDK for testing purposes. This can be useful for local development when you want to test specific scenarios.- 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.
Manual Exposures
Statsig SDKs automatically log an exposure event every time a gate/experiment/config is checked. In some scenarios, you may want to control when to log an exposure. GatesUser Persistent Storage
User Persistent Storage is a storage adapter for running sticky experiments. It allows you to persist user assignments across sessions.Interface
Interface
Example Implementation
Multi-Instance Usage
If you need to create multiple independent instances of the Statsig SDK (for example, to use different API keys or configurations), you can use the instance-based approach:FAQ
How do I run experiments for logged out users?
See the guide on device level experimentsHow can I mock or override the SDK for testing?
Starting inv1.12.0+
, the Ruby SDK supports localMode
and overrides
, see Local Overrides
localMode
is a boolean parameter inStatsigOptions
when initializing the SDK. It restricts all network traffic, so the SDK operates offline and only returns default or override values.