CODEWITHSUNDEEP
phpcodeigniterhttp-redirectab-testing
user2694306
user2694306

Reputation: 4050

Redirecting percentage of traffic

I'm trying to redirect 10% of my users to a beta site we are testing. I am using the Codeigniter framework and I have added the following to the routes.php file:

$absplit = 0.1;
if((mt_rand(0, mt_getrandmax() - 1) / mt_getrandmax() < $absplit))
{
    header('location: '.str_replace($_SERVER[HTTP_HOST],"x.example.com","http://$_SERVER[HTTP_HOST]$_SERVER[REQUEST_URI]"),true,302);
    exit;
}

However, I'm noticing that it's redirecting nearly 40% of the traffic and seems to redirect in chunks of time (e.g. all users for 10 minutes go to one site). Can anyone spot the problem?

Upvotes: 1

Views: 1411

Answers (2)

Zoltan Kochan
Zoltan Kochan

Reputation: 7686

If you don't want to change the backend code you can just write a JavaScript that does the redirect. For example,

if (Math.random() <= 0.1) {
  location.href = '/url-to-redirect-to';
}

If you want the users to have consistent experience. You can save some value to the cookie which will indicate that they have or have not to be redirected.

var cookieValue = cookie.get(key);

if (cookieValue === 'redirect' || !cookieValue && Math.random() <= 0.1) {
  cookie.set(key, 'redirect');
  location.href = '/url-to-redirect-to';
} else {
  cookie.set(key, 'no-redirect');
}

This is how essentialy front-end A/B testing works. Here you can see a more complex example of traffic allocation between many experiments with different percentages of traffic and assignment conditions.

However, in your case a simple if will be enough.

Upvotes: 0

PrestonDocks
PrestonDocks

Reputation: 5428

Create a table with one field of type int. In your main controllers index function, increment that value by 1. Then check it's value, if it is >= to 10 then use a redirect() call and set the database value back to 0.

Upvotes: 0

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