Use the createInstance method to initialize the React SDK and instantiate an instance of the ReactSDKClient class. Each client corresponds to the datafile representing the state of a project for a certain environment.

Version

SDK v1.0.0

Description

The createInstance method accepts a configuration object to configure Optimizely.

Some parameters are optional because the SDK provides a default implementation, but you may want to override these for your production environments. For example, you may want override these to set up an error handler and logger to catch issues, an event dispatcher to manage network calls, and a User Profile Service to ensure sticky bucketing.

Parameters

The table below lists the required and optional parameters in React (created by passing in a Config object. The Config class consists of these fields).

Parameter	Type	Description
datafile optional	string	The JSON string representing the project. At least one of sdkKey or datafile must be provided.
sdkKey optional	string	The key associated with an environment in the project. At least one of sdkKey or datafile must be provided.
eventDispatcher optional	object	An event handler to manage network calls.
logger optional	object	A logger implementation to log issues.
errorHandler optional	object	An error handler object to handle errors.
userProfileService optional	object	A user profile service.
datafileOptions optional	object	Object with configuration for automatic datafile management. Can have `autoUpdate` (boolean), `urlTemplate` (string), and `updateInterval` (number) properties.
defaultDecideOptions optional	Array	Array of OptimizelyDecideOption enums. When the Optimizely client is constructed with this parameter, it sets default decide options which are applied to all the Decide calls made during the lifetime of the Optimizely client. Additionally, you can pass options to individual Decide methods (does not overrides defaults). For details on decide options, see OptimizelyDecideOption.

Returns

Instantiates an instance of the Optimizely class.

Example

In the React SDK, you can provide either sdkKey or datafile or both.

When initializing with just the SDK key, the datafile will be automatically downloaded
When initializing with just the datafile, the SDK will use the given datafile.
When initializing with both the SDK key and datafile, the SDK will use the given datafile to start, then download the latest version of the datafile in the background.

Instantiate using datafile

First, get a copy of the datafile from our server by including the following script in the of your web application. This script adds the datafile on the window variable window.optimizelyDatafile.

<script src="https://cdn.optimizely.com/datafiles/<Your_SDK_Key>.json/tag.js"></script>

Once you have a datafile, you can instantiate an Optimizely client.

import * as optimizelyReactSDK from '@optimizely/react-sdk';

// Instantiate an Optimizely client
const optimizely = optimizelyReactSDK.createInstance({
  datafile: window.optimizelyDatafile,
})

Instantiate using SDK Key

To instantiate using SDK Key, obtain the SDK Key from your project's settings page, then pass sdkKey as a string property in the options object you pass to the createInstance method.

import * as optimizelyReactSDK from '@optimizely/react-sdk';

// Instantiate an Optimizely client
const optimizely = optimizelyReactSDK.createInstance({
  sdkKey: '<Your_SDK_Key>',
});

When you provide the sdkKey, the SDK instance downloads the datafile associated with that sdkKey. When the download completes, the SDK instance updates itself to use the downloaded datafile. This initialize method relies on continuous Internet connectivity (in contrast, in the React Native SDK, you can initialize with an SDK key even while your app is offline.)

Render an `OptimizelyProvider` with a client and user

To use React SDK components inside your app, render an OptimizelyProvider as the parent of your root app component. Provide your Optimizely instance as the optimizely prop, and a user object:

import { OptimizelyProvider, createInstance  } from '@optimizely/react-sdk'

const optimizely = createInstance({
  datafile: window.datafile,
});

class AppWrapper extends React.Component {
  render() {
    return (
      <OptimizelyProvider
        optimizely={optimizely}
            user={{id: '<Your_User_Id>'}}>
        <App />
      </OptimizelyProvider>
    );
  }
}

Notes

Customize datafile management behavior

To customize datafile management behavior, provide a datafileOptions object property inside the options object passed to createInstance. The table lists the supported customizable options.

autoUpdate	boolean	When true, and `sdkKey` was provided in `createInstance` options, automatic updates are enabled on this instance. The default value is `false`.
updateInterval	number	When automatic updates are enabled, this controls the update interval. The unit is milliseconds. The minimum allowed value is 1000 (1 second). The default value is 300000 milliseconds (5 minutes).
urlTemplate	string	A format string used to build the URL from which the SDK will request datafiles. Instances of `%s` will be replaced with the `sdkKey`. When not provided, the SDK will request datafiles from the Optimizely CDN.

The following example shows how to customize datafile management behavior.

import { createInstance } from '@optimizely/react-sdk';

const optimizely = createInstance({
  sdkKey: '<Your_SDK_Key>',
  datafileOptions: {
    autoUpdate: true,
    updateInterval: 600000, // 10 minutes in milliseconds
    urlTemplate: 'http://localhost:5000/datafiles/%s.json',
  },
});

Source files

The language/platform source files containing the implementation for React SDK are at index.ts.