This is part ten in a series of articles.

EDIT: my Feature Management Pluralsight training course is now available.

In part 4 we looked at creating custom feature filters and in part 5 we looked at configuring features with Azure App Configuration. We can combine these techniques to create a custom feature filter that we can configure remotely in Azure.

For example suppose we have the following class representing a custom feature filter that  enables a feature if a query string field is present:

[FilterAlias("BetaQueryString")]
public class BetaQueryStringFeatureFilter : IFeatureFilter
{
    private readonly IHttpContextAccessor _httpContextAccessor;
    
    public BetaQueryStringFeatureFilter(IHttpContextAccessor httpContextAccessor)
    {
        _httpContextAccessor = httpContextAccessor ?? throw new ArgumentNullException(nameof(httpContextAccessor));
    }

    public Task<bool> EvaluateAsync(FeatureFilterEvaluationContext context)
    {
        BetaQueryStringFeatureFilterSettings settings = context.Parameters.Get<BetaQueryStringFeatureFilterSettings>();           

        bool isEnabled = _httpContextAccessor.HttpContext.Request.Query.ContainsKey(settings.QueryStringFieldName);

        return Task.FromResult(isEnabled);
    }
}

The configurable parameters for this feature filter are represented by the following class:

public class BetaQueryStringFeatureFilterSettings
{
    public string QueryStringFieldName { get; set; }
}

In the appsettings.json we could configure a feature called “printing” to use this custom feature filter:

"FeatureManagement": {
  "Printing": {
    "EnabledFor": [
      {
        "Name": "BetaQueryString",
        "Parameters": {
          "QueryStringFieldName": "beta"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Notice in the preceding config that the query string field that needs to be present in the request URL is the string “beta”. This means if the URL was something like “”http://localhost:5607/?beta” the printing feature would be enabled.

If we wanted to enable the filter when the URL query string contained a field called “earlyaccess” we could change the appsettings.config to:

"FeatureManagement": {
  "Printing": {
    "EnabledFor": [
      {
        "Name": "BetaQueryString",
        "Parameters": {
          "QueryStringFieldName": "earlyaccess"
        }
      }
    ]
  }
}

Configuring Custom Feature Filters with Azure App Config

Instead of having the query string field defined in the appsettings.config we could instead hold this value in Azure. Check out part 5 for more info on setting this up.

After configuring the web app to use Azure App Configuration for feature flag settings, we can modify the appsettings.json to remove the QueryStringFieldName parameter because this will now be coming from Azure:

"FeatureManagement": {
  "Printing": {
    "EnabledFor": [
      {
        "Name": "BetaQueryString"          
      }
    ]
  }
}

Setting up a custom/conditional feature filter in Azure App Configuration is a little unintuitive at the moment. After clicking Add and specifying the feature name (in this case “Printing”) you then need to click the On toggle and then click the  Add filter button.

Next, enter a key that matches the name of the custom feature filter, in this case “BetaQueryString” and then click the ellipses … and choose Edit parameters:

The name of the parameter should match what settings value the custom feature filter is looking for, in this case “QueryStringFieldName” and in the Value box enter the configured value you want, for example “beta” :

Click Apply and then Apply again and you should now see the Printing feature marked as conditional:

Now you can run the web app and remotely configure what query string parameter will enable the printing feature.

Be sure to check out my Microsoft Feature Management Pluralsight course get started watching with a free trial.

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