Use flag sets

This guide shows you how to group flags, create releases from sets, and configure flags to subscribe to flag sets .

Flag sets are logical containers for managing groups of related feature flags. As your applications grow and the number of individual flags increases, managing them in a flat list can become cumbersome and error-prone.

Flag sets allow you to organize flags based on functional area, application component, or any other logical criteria, providing a higher-level abstraction for flag operations.

Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have:

1. A gcloud environment configured to manage App Lifecycle Manager resources.
2. Completed the Deploy feature flags quickstart .

Group feature flags

To group flags, you associate them with a flag_set identifier during creation, or update an existing flag. This identifier creates a clear boundary of ownership and lets you use the flags set as a single resource.

Create a flag in a flag set

 gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
flags  
create  
 "auth-flag" 
  
 \ 
  
--key = 
 "auth-flag" 
  
 \ 
  
--flag-value-type = 
BOOL  
 \ 
  
--location = 
global  
 \ 
  
--flag-set = 
 "auth-module-flags" 
  
 \ 
  
--description = 
 "Flag for the core authentication service." 
 

Update an existing flag to add to a flag set

 gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
flags  
update  
 "auth-flag" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
 "global" 
  
--flag-set = 
 "auth-module-flags" 
 

Create a release from a flag set

Instead of manually creating point-in-time snapshots ( FlagRevisions ) for every flag, you can create a FlagRelease that references one or more sets. App Lifecycle Manager automatically handles the creation of all necessary immutable snapshots.

 gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
flags  
releases  
create  
 "auth-release-v1.2" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
global  
 \ 
  
--flag-sets = 
 '["auth-module-flags"]' 
  
 \ 
  
--unit-kind = 
 "UNIT_KIND_NAME" 
 

Replace UNIT_KIND_NAME with your unit kind.

Create a release for all flags

You can set the all_flags boolean to true to fetch all flags linked to the rollout's unit kind:

 gcloud  
beta  
app-lifecycle-manager  
flags  
releases  
create  
 "all-flags-release" 
  
 \ 
  
--location = 
global  
 \ 
  
--all-flags  
 \ 
  
--unit-kind = 
 "UNIT_KIND_NAME" 
 

Consuming a flag set

To subscribe to a flag set, use a selector when you initialize the OpenFeature provider.

Go example:

The selector tells the flag source to filter for this specific set:

  provider 
  
 := 
  
 flagd 
 . 
 NewProvider 
 ( 
  
 // The selector tells the flag source to filter for this specific set 
  
 flagd 
 . 
 WithSelector 
 ( 
 "flagSetId=auth-module-flags" 
 ), 
  
 // ... other options 
 ) 
 

Selector Behavior:

• Empty selector: Selects only flags that have no flag set ID.
• flagSetId=* : Selects all flags associated with the unit.
• flagSetId=X : Selects only flags where the set is exactly X .

What's next

• Learn about Complex Targeting with CEL .
• Learn about Multi-Tenant Architecture .