Monitoring SDK status
Read time: 18 minutes
Last edited: Sep 25, 2024
Overview
This topic explains how various SDKs monitor the connection to LaunchDarkly to determine the most recent flag values.
Monitor the connection to LaunchDarkly
Some SDKs expose some of their internal statuses through the Connection Status API to allow your application to monitor the SDK's status. This is provided primarily as a mechanism for the application to determine how recently the internal flag cache has been updated with the most recent values, as well as diagnosing potential reasons for the flag cache to be out of date.
Client-side SDKs
This feature is available in the following client-side SDKs:
.NET (client-side)
Expand .NET (client-side) code sample
This feature is available in the client-side .NET SDK's versions 2.0.0 and later.
The client-side .NET SDK defines "data source status" as the status of the SDK's communication with LaunchDarkly to get feature flag data. If the streaming connection to LaunchDarkly is interrupted, or, in polling mode, if a polling request fails, the SDK might not be able to receive flag updates. The data source status will indicate this, providing an overall state such as "valid" or "interrupted" and information about the last error that occurred, if any.
To check the data source status:
Alternatively, you can register an event handler that will receive a new status value whenever the status changes.
Here is an example:
To learn more, read IDataSourceStatusProvider
.
Android
Expand Android code sample
This feature is available in the Android SDK's versions 2.8.0 and later.
The Android SDK exposes some of its internal status through APIs to let your application monitor it. This allows the application to determine how recently the internal flag cache has been updated with the most recent values, as well as diagnosing potential reasons for the flag cache to be out of date.
The SDK has seven connectivity states dependent on its configuration, application foreground state, network connectivity, and calls explicitly setting the client offline or online.
This table describes the states:
Connection mode | Description |
---|---|
STREAMING | The SDK is either connected to the flag stream, or is actively attempting to acquire a connection. |
POLLING | The SDK is in foreground polling mode because it was configured with streaming disabled. |
BACKGROUND_POLLING | The SDK has detected the application is in the background and has transitioned to battery-saving background polling. |
BACKGROUND_DISABLED | The SDK was configured with background polling disabled. The SDK has detected the application is in the background and is not attempting to update the flag cache. |
OFFLINE | The SDK has detected that the mobile device does not have an active network connection. It has ceased flag update attempts until the network status changes. |
SET_OFFLINE | The SDK has been explicitly set offline, either in the initial configuration, by |
SHUTDOWN | The shutdown state indicates the SDK has been permanently shutdown as a result of a call to |
The SDK also internally stores a timestamp of the most recent successful and failed connections to LaunchDarkly, as well as information related to the most recent failed connection. The LDClient
method getConnectionInformation()
returns a structure allowing retrieval of these fields.
LDFailure
is a LaunchDarklyException
with an associated FailureType
. It may include a .cause()
, which is propagated from an underlying exception associated with the update's failure. The cause itself should be considered unstable because it is dependent on internal implementation, though the mechanism to retrieve it will be maintained.
The failure types are summarized below:
FailureType | Description |
---|---|
INVALID_RESPONSE_BODY | A response body received either through polling or streaming was unable to be parsed. |
NETWORK_FAILURE | A network request for polling, or the |
UNEXPECTED_STREAM_ELEMENT_TYPE | An event was received through the stream with an unknown event key. This could indicate a newer SDK is available if new event kinds have become available through the flag stream since the SDK's release. |
UNEXPECTED_RESPONSE_CODE | This indicates the |
UNKNOWN_ERROR | Some other issue occurred. |
If matching on the FailureType
, use a default case to handle any future cases provided. The UNEXPECTED_RESPONSE_CODE
case indicates that you can cast the LDFailure
to a LDInvalidResponseCodeFailure
for more information. This more specific failure includes a response code and whether the failure is considered retryable.
Here is an example:
A callback-based interface is also provided to allow notifying the application when the ConnectionMode
changes, as well as whenever the LDFailure
in ConnectionStatus
changes. The application must provide a class instance implementing LDStatusListener
to the SDK client instance method registerStatusListener
to register the listeners with the SDK.
The SDK maintains only a weak reference to the registered LDStatusListener
, so the application maintains a reference for as long as the application desires the listener to be available. This helps prevent creating a long-term reference to an Activity by creating a static internal class instance for use as a listener. By using a weak reference to the listener, the Activity can still be garbage collected normally, even if it maintains a registered LDStatusListener
. We recommend unregistering the listener when it's finished.
Here is a brief example:
C++ (client-side)
Expand C++ (client-side) code sample
The C++ (client-side) SDK exposes some of its internal status to let your application monitor it.
The SDK has several data source states dependent on its configuration, network connectivity, and calls explicitly setting the client offline or online.
This table describes the states:
Data source state | Description |
---|---|
kInitializing | The initial state of the data source when the SDK is being initialized. |
kValid | The data source is currently operational and has not had any problems since the last time it received data. |
kInterrupted | The data source encountered an error that it will attempt to recover from. |
kSetOffline | The application has told the SDK to stay offline. |
kShutdown | The data source has been permanently shut down. This could be because it encountered an unrecoverable error, or because the SDK client was explicitly shut down. |
The SDK stores a timestamp of when the data source state most recently changed. It also stores information about the last error that the data source encountered, if any.
This table describes the possible errors:
LastError value | Description |
---|---|
kUnknown | An unexpected error, such as an uncaught exception. |
kNetworkError | An I/O error, such as a dropped connection. |
kErrorResponse | The LaunchDarkly service returned an HTTP response with an error status. |
kInvalidData | The SDK received malformed data from the LaunchDarkly service. |
kStoreError | The data source itself is working, but when it tried to put an update into the data store, the data store failed. The SDK may not have the latest data. |
Here's how to monitor the data source state:
If you are working in C, there are a few more steps:
-
Define a callback to receive the data source status change:
-
Assign the callback by creating a listener connection:
-
Ensure the connection is freed when you are done with it:
Finally, if you are working in C but are still using the older v2.x SDK, the data source status interface is not available. To wait indefinitely, use a callback:
To learn more, read DataSourceStatus
.
Electron
Expand Electron code sample
By default, the client requests feature flag values only once per user. This happens once at startup time, and then each time you call identify()
. You can also use a persistent connection to receive flag updates whenever they occur.
Enable this behavior by setting streaming
to true
in the client options or calling client.setStreaming(true)
. LaunchDarkly pushes new values to the SDK, which updates the current feature flag state in the background, ensuring that variation()
always returns the latest values.
If you want to be notified when a flag has changed, you can use an event listener for a specific flag.
Here's how:
Alternatively, you can listen for all feature flag changes.
Here's how:
Subscribing to change
events automatically turns on streaming mode as well, unless you have explicitly set streaming
to false
.
Flutter
Expand Flutter code sample
The Flutter SDK exposes some of its internal status through APIs to let your application monitor it. This allows the application to determine how recently the internal flag cache has been updated with the most recent values, as well as diagnose potential reasons for the flag cache to be out of date.
The SDK stores a timestamp of the most recent successful and failed connections to LaunchDarkly, as well as information related to the most recent failed connection. The dataSourceStatus
returns a structure that lets you retrieve these fields.
To learn more about the connection status fields, read DataSourceStatus
.
iOS
Expand iOS code sample
This feature is available in the iOS SDK's versions 4.2.0 and later.
The iOS SDK exposes some of its internal status through the Connection Status API to let your application monitor it. This allows the application to determine how recently the internal flag cache has been updated with the most recent values, as well as diagnosing potential reasons for the flag cache to be out of date.
The SDK has four connectivity states dependent on its configuration, application foreground state, network connectivity, and calls explicitly setting the client offline or online.
This table describes the states:
Connection Mode | Description |
---|---|
streaming | The SDK has an active streaming connection. |
polling | The SDK has an active polling connection. |
offline | The SDK is set offline or has no network connection. |
establishingStreamingConnection | The SDK is attempting to connect to LaunchDarkly by streaming. |
The SDK also stores a timestamp of the most recent successful and failed connections to LaunchDarkly, as well as information related to the most recent failed connection. lastKnownFlagValidity
is nil if either no connection has ever been made successfully or if the SDK has an active streaming connection. It has a value if it is in polling mode and at least one poll has completed successfully, or if it is in streaming mode whenever the streaming connection closes. The LDClient.shared
method getConnectionInformation()
returns a structure that lets you retrieve these fields.
The ConnectionInformation
class can return four different values for lastFailureReason
.
This table describes the values:
lastFailureReason value | Description |
---|---|
none | This returns when no error has been recorded. |
unknownError | This returns when there is an internal error in the stream request. |
unauthorized | This returns when an incorrect mobile key is provided. |
httpError | This returns when an error with an HTTP error code is present. |
You can listen to changes in ConnectionInformation.ConnectionMode
in a similar manner to flag observers.
Here is an example of the API:
React Native
Expand React Native code sample
Starting with version 10 of the React Native SDK, the SDK uses an emitter pattern for errors. You can subscribe to error
and change
events.
Here's how:
To learn more, read on
and off
.
Expand for details on older React Native SDK versions
The React Native SDK exposes some of its internal status through the Connection Status API to allow your application to monitor the SDK's status. It provides this primarily as a mechanism for the application to determine how recently the internal flag cache has been updated with the most recent values, as well as to diagnose potential reasons for the flag cache to be out of date.
Roku
Expand Roku code sample
You can use Roku's observeField
method on your node to respond to changes in status.
Here's how:
Server-side SDKs
The following server-side SDKs provide two kinds of SDK status monitoring:
- Data source status
- Data store status
Data source status is the status of the SDK's communication with LaunchDarkly to get feature flag data. If the streaming connection to LaunchDarkly is interrupted, or, in polling mode, if a polling request fails, the SDK might not be able to receive flag updates. The data source status will indicate this, providing an overall state such as "valid" or "interrupted" and information about the last error that occurred, if any.
Data store status is the status of a database, such as Redis or DynamoDB, if the SDK has been configured to use one. If the SDK tries to read from or write to a database and encounters an error, the data store status will indicate this.
This feature is available in the following server-side SDKs:
.NET (server-side)
Expand .NET (server-side) code sample
This feature is available in the .NET SDK's versions 6.0.0 and later.
To check the data source status:
Alternatively, you can register an event handler that will receive a new status value whenever the status changes.
Here is an example:
C++ (server-side)
Expand C++ (server-side) code sample
The C++ (server-side) SDK exposes some of its internal status to let your application monitor it.
The SDK has several data source states dependent on its configuration, network connectivity, and calls explicitly setting the client offline or online.
This table describes the states:
Data source state | Description |
---|---|
kInitializing | The initial state of the data source when the SDK is being initialized. |
kValid | The data source is currently operational and has not had any problems since the last time it received data. |
kInterrupted | The data source encountered an error that it will attempt to recover from. |
kSetOffline | The application has told the SDK to stay offline. |
kShutdown | The data source has been permanently shut down. This could be because it encountered an unrecoverable error, or because the SDK client was explicitly shut down. |
The SDK stores a timestamp of when the data source state most recently changed. It also stores information about the last error that the data source encountered, if any.
This table describes the possible errors:
LastError value | Description |
---|---|
kUnknown | An unexpected error, such as an uncaught exception. |
kNetworkError | An I/O error, such as a dropped connection. |
kErrorResponse | The LaunchDarkly service returned an HTTP response with an error status. |
kInvalidData | The SDK received malformed data from the LaunchDarkly service. |
kStoreError | The data source itself is working, but when it tried to put an update into the data store, the data store failed. The SDK may not have the latest data. |
Here's how to monitor the data source state:
If you are working in C, there are a few more steps:
-
Define a callback to receive the data source status change:
-
Assign the callback by creating a listener connection:
-
Ensure the connection is freed when you are done with it:
To learn more, read DataSourceStatus()
in Client
.
Go
Expand Go code sample
To check the data source status:
Alternatively, you can monitor a channel that provides a new status value whenever the status changes:
To learn more, read GetDataSourceStatusProvider
and GetDataStoreStatusProvider
.
Java
Expand Java code sample
To check the data source status:
Alternatively, you can register an event listener that receives a new status value whenever the status changes:
To learn more, read DataSourceStatusProvider
and DataStoreStatusProvider
.
Python
Expand Python code sample
To check the data source status:
Alternatively, you can register an event listener that receives a new status value whenever the status changes:
To learn more, read DataSourceStatusProvider
and DataStoreStatusProvider
.
Ruby
Expand Ruby code sample
To check the data source status:
Alternatively, you can register an event listener that receives a new status value whenever the status changes:
To learn more, read DataSource::StatusProvider
and DataStore::StatusProvider
.