A toggle is a switch or button that allows you to change between two settings or options. It’s commonly used in technology, computing and programming to provide users with flexibility and control over their experience. In everyday life, we often toggle back and forth between programs to keep our work organized and efficient.
Toggles provide remarkable flexibility in deploying and managing new software features by allowing developers to activate or deactivate code without redeploying the entire system. This makes it easier to test and roll out changes with a smaller group of users before broader deployments.
Feature toggles are also a great tool for performing multivariate or A/B testing. By assigning different cohorts to distinct codepaths, we can observe the effects of each on a particular set of users without needing to make any changes to our product or production environment.
While the benefits of using Toggles are clear, there are some drawbacks that teams must be aware of. Unmonitored toggles can quickly accumulate, creating tangled conditional logic in the codebase, and hindering readability. It’s a best practice to regularly audit and remove unused flags to mitigate this issue.
To create a toggle in your application, add a checkbox input to the page and wrap it with a span with class toggle. Then, place the toggle input within an isFollowing variable to synchronize its state with all views bound to it. Lastly, label the toggle with a description of its current state.
