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I have a published app (Android/iOS) and I'd like to instrument the next version so that I can remotely enable/disable or adjust features, through a web interface. This could facilitate a/b testing for example.

I'm struggling with this because I don't know what this concept is called (remote feature control?, feature flagging?), so it's hard for me to search for solutions. I'm hoping there are services out there that provide a web interface for controlling simple key-value pairs for my app on the fly, possibly allowing for cohorts. I've searched through the docs for crittercism, localytics, google docs and haven't found anything.

At runtime my app would rely on that service's sdk code to query the server-set value of such a parameter and act accordingly. For example, the app might use the value 500 milliseconds for an animation based on a key called ANIMATION_DURATION.

Any advice on terminology or examples of such services would be much appreciated. Thanks.

As I'm writing this, I just found a company called Airwatch. They call their solution "Enterprise Mobility Management", so maybe that's one example.

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  • did you find anything ? I am looking for this answer too.
    – mohkhan
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 5:37
  • Localytics advertises a/b testing but I don't think their stuff is fully-baked yet. So we are evaluating another product called Artisan. Please upvote this question so others will be more likely to find it.
    – Jo Jo
    Commented Sep 24, 2014 at 7:03
  • Apparently "Feature Toggle" or "Feature Flagging" is the term for this. Here is a wiki article on the subject: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Feature_toggle I'm now considering a company called Apptimize which advertises support for a/b testing.
    – Jo Jo
    Commented Oct 22, 2014 at 1:45
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    I've found "feature toggle" more commonly used for the closely related concept of including code to turn off support on a per-build basis for features that are not yet finished. The idea is to simplify development by avoiding the need for version control branches but still allow you to release a new version without finishing all outstanding work.
    – Jules
    Commented Oct 22, 2014 at 11:25
  • Here is a related post from SO: stackoverflow.com/questions/20301353/…
    – Jo Jo
    Commented Dec 1, 2014 at 19:53

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If you are doing such testing, you will need a way to get the result data back to you. Feature toggling services won't necessarily provide such two-way communication. It seems as though you will need a two-way communication channel, and probably some kind of registration or log-in, such as by having a http server and requiring some frequency of communication from the app. (not necessarily constant connection, but frequent enough for your desire to change settings and retrieve test data.)

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