Decide methods for the Ruby SDK

An overview of the decide methods for the Ruby SDK, which can be used to return a flag decision for a user in Optimizely Feature Experimentation.

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Use the Decide methods to return flag decisions for a user. The flag decision includes flag enabled/disabled status and flag variation.

This page describes the following Decide methods:

Decide

Version

SDK v3.8 and higher

Description

Returns a decision result for a flag key for a user. The decision result is returned in an OptimizelyDecision object and contains all data required to deliver the flag rule.

Decide is a method of the UserContext object. See OptimizelyUserContext for details.

See the OptimizelyDecision for details of the returned decision object.

Parameters

The following table describes parameters for the Decide method:

Parameter	Type	Description
key	String	The key of the feature flag
options (optional)	Array	Array of OptimizelyDecideOption enums. See following table.

OptimizelyDecideOption

The following example shows how you can set options individually on any Decide method, or as global defaults when you instantiate the Optimizely client.

require 'optimizely'

# set global default decide options when initializing the client
optimizely_client = Optimizely::Project.new(
  sdk_key: '<YOUR_SDK_KEY>',
  default_decide_options: [Optimizely::Decide::OptimizelyDecideOption::DISABLE_DECISION_EVENT]
)

user = optimizely_client.create_user_context('test_user')

user.decide_all(
  [Optimizely::Decide::OptimizelyDecideOption::ENABLED_FLAGS_ONLY,
   Optimizely::Decide::OptimizelyDecideOption::IGNORE_USER_PROFILE_SERVICE]
)

The following table shows details for the options you can set on Decide methods.

OptimizelyDecideOption enum	If set:
DISABLE_DECISION_EVENT	Prevents the visitor from firing an impression while still being served the variation, which disables displaying results of the Decide method on the Results page. This setting can be why the Decision Event Dispatched enum is false in the returned `OptimizelyDecision` object or the DECIDE notification listener payload.
ENABLED_FLAGS_ONLY	Return decisions for enabled flags only. This is a valid option only for methods that decide multiple flags, like the Decide All method. This option is ignored if it is invalid. When this option is not set, the SDK returns all decisions regardless of whether the flag is enabled or not.
IGNORE_USER_PROFILE_SERVICE	When set, the SDK bypasses user profile service (UPS) (both lookup and save) for the decision. When this option is not set, UPS overrides audience targeting, traffic allocation, and experiment mutual exclusion groups.
INCLUDE_REASONS	Return log messages in the Reasons field of OptimizelyDecision object. Note that unlike info or debug messages, critical error messages are always returned, regardless of this setting.
EXCLUDE_VARIABLES	Exclude flag variable values from the decision result. Use this option to minimize the returned decision by skipping large JSON variables.

Returns

The Decide method returns an OptimizelyDecision object. For more information, see OptimizelyDecision.

If the method encounters a critical error (SDK not ready, invalid flag key, etc), then it returns a decision with a nill Variation Key field and populates the Reasons field with error messages (regardless of the Include Reasons option).

Example decision

The following is an example of calling the Decide method and accessing the returned OptimizelyDecision object:

# create the user and decide which flag rule & variation they bucket into 
user = optimizely.create_user_context(user_id, attributes)
decision = user.decide('product_sort')

# variation. if nil, decision fail with a critical error
variation_key = decision.variation_key

# flag enabled state:
enabled = decision.enabled

# String variable value:
value = decision.variables['logged_in'].to_s

# all variable values
all_var_values = decision.variables

# flag decision reasons
reasons = decision.reasons

# user for which the decision was made
user_context = decision.user_context

Side effects

Invokes the DECISION notification listener if this listener is enabled.

Decide All

Returns decisions for all active (unarchived) flags for a user.

See OptimizelyDecision for details on the decision object.

Version

SDK v3.7 and higher

Description

Use the Decide All method to return a map of flag decisions for a user.

Parameters

The following table describes parameters for the Decide All method:

Parameter	Type	Description
options (optional)	Array	Array of OptimizelyDecideOption enums.

Returns

The Decide All method returns a map of OptimizelyDecisions. For more information, see OptimizelyDecision.

If the method fails for all flags (for example, the SDK isn't ready or the user context is invalid), then it returns an empty map. If the method detects an error for a specific flag, it returns error messages in the Reasons field of the decision for that flag.

Examples

The following is an example of getting flags for the user with the Decide All call:

# make decisions for all active (unarchived) flags in the project for a user
decisions = user.decide_all()
# or only for enabled flags
decisions = user.decide_all([Optimizely::Decide::OptimizelyDecideOption::ENABLED_FLAGS_ONLY])

decision_for_flag1 = decisions['flag_1']

Side effects

Invokes the DECISION notification listener for each decision, if this listener is enabled.

Decide For Keys

In the PHP SDK, the Decide For Keys method makes decisions for a user for specified flag keys.

Version

SDK v3.7 and higher

Description

Get a map of flag decisions for an array of flag keys.

Parameters

The following table describes parameters for the Decide method:

The following table describes parameters for the Decide For Keys method:

Parameter	Type	Description
keys	Array	Array of string flag keys.
options (optional)	Array	Array of OptimizelyDecideOption enums.

Returns

Returns a map of OptimizelyDecisions. For more information, see OptimizelyDecision.

Example

The following is an example of getting specified flags for the user:

# make a decisions for specific enabled flags
options = [Optimizely::Decide::OptimizelyDecideOption::ENABLED_FLAGS_ONLY]
decisions = user.decide_for_keys(['flag_1', 'flag_2'], options)

decision_for_flag1 = decisions['flag_1']
decision_for_flag2 = decisions['flag_2']

Side effects

Invokes the DECISION notification listener for each decision, if this listener is enabled.

Source files

The language and platform source files containing the implementation for Ruby are available on GitHub.

Updated 11 months ago