Initialize SDK
How to initialize the Optimizely Feature Experimentation React SDK in your application.
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 and higher
Description
The createInstance
method accepts a configuration object to configure Optimizely Feature Experimentation.
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 to 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 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. Either an SDK key or datafile (or both) 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 that are applied to all the Decide calls made during the lifetime of the Optimizely client. You can also pass options to individual Decide methods (does not override defaults). For details on decide options, see OptimizelyDecideOption. |
Returns
Instantiates an instance of the Optimizely Feature Experimentation class.
Example
In the React SDK, you can provide either sdkKey
or datafile
or both.
- When initializing with just the datafile, the SDK will use the given datafile.
- When initializing with just the SDK key, the datafile will be automatically downloaded.
- 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 the 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
OptimizelyProvider
with a client and userTo 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.
Option | Type | Explanation |
---|---|---|
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',
},
});
Considerations when using development mode
If you have created your React application using Create React App or are using a different type of development environment that uses hot reloading, there is a possibility to experience unusual behavior.
When running your application in development mode with hot reloading, for example, when using npm start
, you may see that the Optimizely Feature Experimentation SDK is initialized more than once. This may cause inconsistent behavior, such as the page re-rendering multiple times or users being bucketed into incorrect variations.
This is not a problem with the Optimizely Feature Experimentation React SDK. Instead, this happens when you wrap your application in React.StrictMode
, which purposely renders the application twice in development mode to detect potential problems. To avoid this, please disable the strict mode for the top-level component and move it to the lower-level components.
When building your app for production usenpm run build
and hosting it on a web server, the Optimizely Feature Experimentation React SDK is not initialized more than once.
Source files
The language/platform source files containing the implementation for React SDK are at index.ts.
Updated about 1 month ago