Skip to main content

How to Toggle Feature Flags

In this document, you’ll learn about what feature flags are and how to toggle them.

Overview​

Feature flags are used in Medusa to guard beta features that aren’t ready for live and production servers. This allows the Medusa team to keep publishing releases more frequently, while also working on necessary future features behind the scenes.

To use these beta features, you must enable their feature flags.

Available Feature Flags​

You can view a list of available feature flags that you can toggle in the Medusa GitHub mono-repository. In each feature flag file, you can find the default value of the feature flag, its name, environment variable name, and more.

If a feature flag is enabled/disabled by default, you don’t need to manually enable/disable it. Only set the feature flag’s value if it’s different than the default.

Enable Feature Flags​

Features guarded by feature flags are experimental and beta features. Enable them with caution.

There are two ways to enable a feature flag.

Method One: Using Environment Variables​

You can enable a feature by setting the value of its environment variable to true. You can find the name of a feature flag’s environment variable in the loader file it’s defined in. It is defined under the property env_key in the exported object.

For example, to enable the Tax-Inclusive Pricing beta feature, add the following environment variable:

MEDUSA_FF_TAX_INCLUSIVE_PRICING=true
Report Incorrect CodeReport Incorrect CodeCopy to ClipboardCopy to Clipboard

Method Two: Using Server Settings​

You can enable a feature by using the server settings in medusa-config.js. You can find a feature flag’s key in the loader file it’s defined in. It is defined under the property key in the exported object.

For example, to enable the Tax-Inclusive Pricing beta feature, add the following to the exported object in medusa-config.js:

medusa-config.js
module.exports = {
  featureFlags: {
    tax_inclusive_pricing: true,
  },
  // ...
}
Report Incorrect CodeReport Incorrect CodeCopy to ClipboardCopy to Clipboard

Note About Precedence​

The environment variable’s value has higher precedence over the server settings. So, if you use both these methods on your server, the value of the environment variable will be used.

For example, if the value of the environment variable is set to false, but the value of the feature flag in the server settings is set to true, the feature flag will take the value of the environment variable and will be disabled.

Running Migrations​

As feature flags generally include adding new entities or making changes to entities in the database, you must run the migrations after enabling the feature flag:

medusa migrations run
Report Incorrect CodeReport Incorrect CodeCopy to ClipboardCopy to Clipboard

You can learn more about migrations in this documentation.

Disable Feature Flags​

Disabling feature flags follows the same process as enabling the feature flags. All you have to do is change the value in the environment variables or the server settings to false.

Once you disable a feature flag, all endpoints, entities, services, or other related classes and functionalities are disabled.

Revert Migrations​

If you had the feature flag previously enabled, and you want to disable this feature flag completely, you might need to revert the migrations you ran when you enabled it.

You can follow this documentation to learn how to revert the last migration you ran.

See Also​