Create a variant flag

Overview

A variant flag serves one of a fixed set of string values. In this guide you add search-variant with the variants control, semantic, and hybrid, push it, and switch on the served value in code.

Steps

Define the flag

// shipd.config.ts
import { defineFlags } from "shipdit/config";

export default defineFlags({
  "search-variant": {
    type: "variant",
    variants: ["control", "semantic", "hybrid"] as const,
    default: "control",
    description: "Search ranking variant",
    tags: ["search"],
  },
});

// Entries inside config.ShipdConfig (import github.com/alasti-company/useshipd.com/sdks/go/config).
"search-variant": {Type: "variant", Default: "control",
    Variants: []string{"control", "semantic", "hybrid"}},

For Go, add definitions to Config in shipd.config.go, then run shipd push. See Define flags in code for the complete file.default must be one of variants. TypeScript checks this at compile time; Go’s ShipdConfig validates it when exporting. In TypeScript, keep as const to preserve literal variants.

Push it

shipd push --project web-app --env production

Evaluate it

// src/search.ts
const variant = shipd.getVariant("search-variant", { userId: "usr_8f2k19" });
// "control" | "semantic" | "hybrid"

switch (variant) {
  case "semantic":
    return semanticSearch(query);
  case "hybrid":
    return hybridSearch(query);
  default:
    return controlSearch(query);
}

// search.go
variant := client.GetVariant("search-variant", shipd.EvaluationContext{UserID: "usr_8f2k19"})
switch variant {
case "semantic":
    return semanticSearch(query)
case "hybrid":
    return hybridSearch(query)
default:
    return controlSearch(query)
}

In React:

src/components/search.tsx

const variant = useVariant("search-variant");

See getVariant.

Choose who gets which variant

On the flag page in the dashboard, set Fallthrough to a variant, or add rules whose Serve is a variant. Click Save environment.

To split users randomly across variants, see Run an A/B test.

Create it without a config file

shipd flags create --key search-variant --type variant --variants control,semantic,hybrid

--variants is required with --type variant. See CLI reference.

Flags

Config as code

Operations

Enterprise

Migrate to shipd

Create a variant flag

Overview

Steps

Create it without a config file

​Overview

​Steps

​Create it without a config file

Overview

Steps

Create it without a config file