Proctor Demo and Reference Implementation
This project is a reference implementation and demonstration of Proctor, a Java-based A/B testing framework by Indeed. It is a simple Spring MVC webapp that uses Proctor to determine what background color to set for a web application.
For more information, see the Proctor documentation. The Quick Start document is a good guide to understanding the code in this reference implementation.
Demo Online
The demo is running on heroku: http://indeedeng-hello-proctor.herokuapp.com. It loads its test definitions from JSON files posted as GISTs on github. A URL parameter allows you to change the definition file.
Things to Try
-
Testing two colors at 25% and 25%: link. Click "Show Details" and "Reset" to change your user ID and (possibly) be put in a different test bucket.
-
Testing the same two colors at 50% and 50%: link
-
Going to 100% for one color: link
-
Using
prforceGroups
to see a different test group, regardless of allocations: link -
Reset to discard the forced group in the previous step: link
-
Basing color on Android vs. iOS user agent instead of random allocation: link. If you're not on Android or iOS you won't see a background color.
Web-Based Remote Service API
An additional endpoint /rpc
is provided in this implementation as an example of how you might implement group selection as a remote service. To use this endpoint, you must provide as least the uid
(user ID) and agent
(user agent) query parameters. It does not use any cookies or HTTP headers directly. It supports these parameters:
Parameter | Description | Required? | Example |
uid | User ID for USER-based tests (can be any string) | Yes | 8ac65ba448be45afb86706e8cab979cf |
agent | User Agent (equivalent to User-Agent HTTP header) | Yes (may be blank) | Mozilla/5.0 |
defn | Definition URL | No (uses default if not provided) | https://raw.githubusercontent.com/indeedeng/proctor-demo/master/proctor-example.json |
Building and Running Demo Locally
-
mvn clean package && java -jar target/dependency/webapp-runner.jar target/*.war
-
Go to http://localhost:8080/
The Source
ProctorGroups.json
The JSON specification that is enumerates the test and its buckets. This is used to generate convenience classes at compile time and to load the test matrix at runtime.
DefinitionManager.java
Helper component that manages loading and caching the test matrix from a definition file at a remote URL.
DemoController.java
Spring controller that handles assigning a UUID cookie to identify the user and calling into proctor to get the groups for the current user. Also provides /rpc
service endpoint support.
demo.jsp
Java Servlet Page view for the demo controller; renders the test behavior and some controls to interact with the demo.
UserAgent.java
A helper class based partially on bitwalker's UserAgentUtils that can be a useful context parameter for proctor.