A toggle is a small piece of wood or plastic which is sewn to something such as a coat or bag and is pushed through a loop or hole to fasten it. In computers and some machines, a toggle is used to switch between two functions. The word toggle is also a verb meaning to move back and forth between two positions, such as when you use the keyboard shortcut Alt+Tab in Windows or Mac OS to switch between two programs.
The term toggle is also often used to refer to a switch in software which allows you to enable or disable features within an application. Feature toggles are a key part of any continuous development process and can be used for anything from experimentation to acting as circuit breakers in your applications during high latency periods.
While there are many ways to use feature toggles, they all come down to the same thing: controlling the flow of data through your application. This means that a toggle is an excellent tool for performing A/B tests and validation of new code and features. By using a feature toggle, you can test a new feature with a select segment of your users and then remotely rollback it to your full user base if necessary.
Toggles are also commonly used to enable and disable functionality in your app that is only relevant for a certain group of your users. This is known as targeted or gated deployment and allows your engineering team to validate new functionality with a smaller segment of your user base before rolling it out to everyone.
Some operation toggles are short-lived and only remain in place for a few days or weeks. However, some are longer-lived and can even be semi-permanent (such as permission toggles). This allows you to control the flow of data through your application on a cohort-by-cohort basis in order to make data-driven optimizations on things such as your call to action wording or purchase flows.
Regardless of the longevity of your toggles, it’s important that you follow some basic guidelines in order to keep your code clean and maintainable. Otherwise, you can quickly end up with a huge set of if-else statements in your code which will require a lot of maintenance work.
A good practice is to create a separate branch in your source code management system for each toggle that you want to implement or test. This will allow you to merge and reconcile changes easily between the branch that contains the toggle and the main trunk of your codebase.
As your application and the number of toggles you have grows, it’s essential to find a way to manage them in a centralized manner so that you can easily track, remove and maintain them to reduce technical debt. Fortunately, a centralized feature flag management platform such as Kameleoon can help your team keep all of your toggles and branch versions in one place for easy management.
