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---
layout: page
title: Managing Identity
---
For effective A/B tests, you want to:
# Randomly show different alternatives to different people
# Consistently show the same alternative to the same person
# Know which alternative you're showing and tracking
# When running multiple tests at once, keep them independent
Vanity will assign each visitor a unique identifier and store it in a cookie that persists across sessions. That way, each visitor will get to see the same alternatives on repeating visits. Assuming they use the same browser on all visits.
If you have a better way of tracking visitors, e.g. using sign in, you'll want to use that instead. That way the same person gets treated to the same experiment, even if they switch between machines and browsers.
You can choose either option using the @use_vanity@ method. In the first case, just call @use_vanity@ from within the @ApplicationController@. In the second case, you'll want to pass @use_vanity@ either a block that returns an identity value, or the name of a method that returns an object which provides the identity.
Sounds complicated? These two examples are equivalent:
<pre>
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
use_vanity :current_user
end
</pre>
<pre>
class ApplicationController < ActionController::Base
use_vanity { |c| c.current_user && c.current_user.id }
end
</pre>
If you use either block or method name and they return @nil@, Vanity will fallback on persistent cookie mechanism.
An identity can be anything. For example, if you're running an experiment to test a new feature that will be available in some projects but not others, you'll want to slice the audience by project identifier, not user ID.
You can also give each experiment a different identity using the @identify@ callback. Here's an example that tells one experiment to use a project identifier:
<pre>
ab_test "New feature" do
description "New feature only available to some projects"
identify { |c| c.current_project.id }
end
</pre>
Version data entries
28 entries across 28 versions & 4 rubygems