In today's fast-paced digital environment, delivering seamless user experiences is more important than ever.

Developers are constantly seeking ways to reduce latency and enhance performance for their applications.

That's where the integration of Statsig and Fastly comes into play. By combining Statsig's feature management and experimentation tools with Fastly's powerful edge computing platform, teams can optimize their web services, bringing configurations and experiments closer to users. Let's explore how this integration works and how it can benefit your projects.

Understanding the integration between Statsig and Fastly

Statsig's integration with Fastly brings your configurations and experiments closer to your users. By efficiently pushing Statsig Configs to Fastly KV, you can optimize performance for gate and experiment evaluations in your Fastly projects.

Leveraging Statsig within Fastly's edge computing environment means configurations are managed closer to the user. This proximity reduces latency and minimizes flicker, resulting in a seamless and responsive experience for your users.

Integrating Statsig with Fastly also streamlines configuration management. Developers can swiftly bootstrap projects and implement the Statsig Fastly Data Adapter into their workers. This efficient process frees up your team to focus on delivering high-quality web services, while taking advantage of Statsig's powerful experimentation and feature flagging tools.

However, be mindful of certain limitations. Fastly Config Store size restrictions may prevent Statsig from pushing larger configurations. Additionally, Statsig ID Lists are not currently synced into Fastly, which might affect some use cases.

By combining Statsig's robust feature management with Fastly's edge capabilities, you can optimize your web services and deliver exceptional user experiences. This integration empowers teams to innovate and iterate rapidly, bringing configurations and experiments right to the edge.

Configuring Statsig integration with Fastly

To get started with the integration, head over to the Project Settings in the Statsig Console and select Fastly under Integrations. You'll need your Fastly API Key, which you can obtain from the Fastly portal under Account → API Tokens.

Next, choose your Store Type: either "Config Store" or "KV Store". Provide the corresponding Config Store ID or KV Store ID as needed.

As your configuration payload grows, you might want to filter the configurations synced to the KV namespace by a target app. This optional step helps manage payload size effectively.

Once you've filled in all the necessary information, click Enable. The Statsig backend will then push a generated config payload to your store within a minute.

For more details, check out the Fastly Integration documentation by Statsig.

Implementing the Statsig SDK in Fastly workers

To bring Statsig's capabilities into your Fastly workers, start by installing the Statsig SDK. You'll also need the Fastly KV Data Adapter, which you can install using npm.

This setup allows you to seamlessly integrate Statsig's feature flagging and experimentation tools within your Fastly infrastructure. After installation, initialize the SDK with the FastlyDataAdapter. This enables gate and experiment checks, allowing your Fastly workers to efficiently evaluate feature flags and assign users to experiments based on Statsig's configuration specs.

With the SDK in place, you can execute gate checks to determine user access to specific features. Statsig's event handling system ensures that all events are properly flushed and processed, optimizing performance within your workers.

By leveraging the Statsig SDK and Fastly KV Data Adapter, you can manage feature rollouts and experiments at the edge. This integration empowers you to deliver personalized experiences to users, all while maintaining the speed and reliability of your Fastly-powered applications.

Best practices and considerations for managing configurations

When using Fastly Config Stores with Statsig, it's important to be mindful of size limitations. If your configuration payload becomes too large, Statsig may be unable to push updates. To mitigate this, consider filtering the configurations synced to the KV namespace by target app.

Fastly's limitations on timers prevent the Statsig SDK from automatically polling for updates across requests. However, you can use the manual sync API to update the SDK's internal store. This approach ensures your configurations remain up-to-date without relying on timers.

Also, note that Statsig ID Lists are not currently synced into Fastly KVs or Config Stores. If your application relies heavily on large ID lists, you might need to find alternative solutions for checking them in Fastly compute services.

By keeping these considerations in mind, you can effectively manage your configurations and optimize your application's performance. Remember to monitor your Config Store size, utilize the manual sync API when necessary, and be aware of unsupported features like ID Lists. With careful planning, the Statsig-Fastly integration can help you deliver exceptional user experiences while leveraging the benefits of edge computing.

Closing thoughts

Integrating Statsig with Fastly brings the power of feature management and experimentation right to the edge of your network. By understanding the integration, configuring it properly, and following best practices, you can optimize your web services for performance and deliver personalized experiences to your users.

If you're interested in learning more, check out the Statsig documentation and the Fastly integration guide. Hope you find this useful in building your products effectively!

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