Using Feature Flags with Sculpin

Background

I was asked last week to add a new feature, a Facebook pixel for measuring and building advertising campaigns, to a client's website which I built using the Sculpin static site generator.

The site uses settings within the app/config/sculpin_site.yml file for storing site IDs and usernames. For this, I would add something like:

facebook:
pixel:
id: "abc123"

It can then be retrieved with .

If I then needed to disable the pixel, then I'd typically remove the pixel ID:

facebook:
pixel:
id: ~

Introducing feature flags

A technique that I like to use on other projects is using feature flags (aka feature toggles).

Whilst, in this instance, a feature flag wouldn't separate deploying code from toggling a feature - a static site will need to be re-generated and deployed - I thought that there was value in being able to easily toggle a feature without changing its configuration or removing code within the site's templates.

Feature flags in Sculpin

My Sculpin feature flag implementation was to add a feature_flags key within sculpin_site.yml, with each feature's name as the key and a boolean value to set whether it's enabled - similar to how the Drupal 7 version of the Feature Toggle module works.

This is how I added the Facebook pixel feature flag:

feature_flags:
add_facebook_pixel: true

Using the Facebook pixel feature flag

The Facebook pixel code is stored within it's own partial that I can include from my source/_layouts/app.html.twig layout, including the pixel ID and whether or not the feature flag is enabled.

{% include "facebook-pixel" with {

is_enabled: site.feature_flags.add_facebook_pixel,
pixel_id: site.facebook.pixel.id,
} only %}

Within the partial, I can check that both the feature flag is enabled and that there is a Facebook pixel ID, and only add the pixel code if both conditions return a truthy value.

Now the pixel can be removed just by setting add_facebook_pixel: false in sculpin_site.yml, and without changing any other configuration or templates.