Java SDK reference

This reference guide documents all of the methods available in the Java SDK, and explains in detail how these methods work. If you want to dig even deeper, our SDKs are open source. To learn more, read Java SDK GitHub repository or our Javadocs. Additionally you can clone and run a sample application using this SDK and an example of running it in another JRE-based language such as Scala.

Getting started

Building on top of our Getting Started guide, the following steps will get you started with using the LaunchDarkly SDK in your Java application.

The first step is to install the LaunchDarkly SDK as a dependency in your application using your application's dependency manager. Refer to the SDK releases page to identify the latest version.

In this example, it uses version 5.3.0:

1<dependency>
2  <groupId>com.launchdarkly</groupId>
3  <artifactId>launchdarkly-java-server-sdk</artifactId>
4  <version>5.3.0</version>
5</dependency>
6
7// or in Gradle:
8implementation group: 'com.launchdarkly', name: 'launchdarkly-java-server-sdk', version: '5.3.0'
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Next, import the LaunchDarkly client in your application code.

1import com.launchdarkly.sdk.*;
2import com.launchdarkly.sdk.server.*;
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Once the SDK is installed and imported, you'll want to create a single, shared instance of LDClient. You should specify your SDK key here so that your application will be authorized to connect to LaunchDarkly and for your application and environment.

Here's how:

1LDClient ldClient = new LDClient("YOUR_SDK_KEY");
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Using ldClient, you can check which variation a particular user should receive for a given feature flag:

1LDUser user = new LDUser("user@test.com");
2boolean showFeature = ldClient.boolVariation("your.feature.key", user, false);
3if (showFeature) {
4  // application code to show the feature
5}
6else {
7  // the code to run if the feature is off
8}
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Lastly, when your application is about to terminate, shut down ldClient with close(). This ensures that the client releases any resources it is using, and that any pending analytics events are delivered to LaunchDarkly. If your application quits without this shutdown step, you may not see your requests and users on the dashboard, because they are derived from analytics events. This is something you only need to do once.

Here's how:

1// shut down the client, since we're about to quit
2ldClient.close();
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Using the Java SDK in OSGi

Versions 4.6.0 and higher of the SDK can be installed as OSGi bundles.

Note that the SDK's default jar—the one you get from Maven or Gradle if you do not specify a "classifier"—does not contain Gson or SLF4j, since applications are often built with their own specific versions of those libraries. Therefore, using that jar in OSGi requires Gson and SLF4j to be provided by some other bundle.

However, there is also a distribution that includes Gson and SLF4j as part of the SDK bundle. You can use this if you do not care about controlling the versions of those libraries separately. To do so, add the classifier "all":

1<!-- in Maven: -->
2<dependency>
3   <groupId>com.launchdarkly</groupId>
4   <artifactId>launchdarkly-java-server-sdk</artifactId>
5   <version>5.3.0</version>
6   <classifier>all</classifier>
7</dependency>
8
9// or in Gradle:
10"com.launchdarkly:launchdarkly-java-server-sdk:5.3.0:all"
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Lastly, shut down the client when your application terminates. To learn more, read Shutting down.

Supported features

This SDK supports the following features:

• Configuration
• Evaluating flags
• Flag evaluation reasons
• Flushing events
• Getting all flags
• Identifying and changing users
• Logging configuration
• Monitoring SDK status
• Offline mode
• Secure mode
• Sending custom events
• Shutting down
• Storing data
• Subscribing to flag changes
• User configuration