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[sdk/local-evaluation] Multivariate flag with overrides crashes on BigInt serialization (8.1.0) / resolves to a null variant (7.0.3)

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Assessment

Difficulty
4/5
Estimated time
3-5 days
Newbie friendliness
55/100
Issue type
Bug
Clarity
Mostly clear
Activity status
Quiet
Tech stack
nodejs, typescript
Domain
api, backend

Research direction

Start with flagsmith-engine/evaluation/evaluationContext/mappers.js, especially mapIdentityOverridesToSegments and mapEnvironmentModelToEvaluationContext, then trace how sdk/index.js calls getIdentityFlagsFromDocument. Reproduce with local evaluation, a multivariate flag, segment and identity overrides, and compare versions 8.1.0 and 7.0.3. Done means getIdentityFlags() does not throw and returns a configured variant value consistently with remote evaluation.

Written by the indexing model from the issue text.

Description

Summary

Under local evaluation (enableLocalEvaluation: true), evaluating a multivariate flag fails.
We observe two different behaviours depending on the SDK version, against the same environment:

flagsmith-nodejs Result
8.1.0 (latest) getIdentityFlags() throws TypeError: Do not know how to serialize a BigInt
7.0.3 No throw, but the flag resolves to a null value instead of one of the multivariate variant values — even though enabled is true and the segment matches

Remote evaluation (enableLocalEvaluation: false) resolves the variant correctly in both versions, so this is specific to the local-evaluation engine.

This may be related to #267 (same mapIdentityOverridesToSegments / local-evaluation path), but the trigger and symptom are different, so we're reporting it separately.

Environment
  • flagsmith-nodejs 8.1.0 and 7.0.3
  • Node.js v22.13.1
  • Server-side SDK key, Edge API (https://edge.api.flagsmith.com/api/v1/)
  • enableLocalEvaluation: true, environmentRefreshIntervalSeconds: 60
Steps to reproduce
  1. Create a MULTIVARIATE flag with a weighted split (e.g. 33/34/33 across three options).
  2. Add a segment override for that flag.
  3. Ensure the environment also contains at least one identity override entry.
  4. With enableLocalEvaluation: true, call:
    await flagsmith.getIdentityFlags(identifier, { currency: 'EUR', domain: 'https://www.example.com' });
    

The environment additionally contains several identity_overrides entries (5 in our case, identifiers redacted).

Actual behaviour

8.1.0 — stack trace:

TypeError: Do not know how to serialize a BigInt
    at JSON.stringify (<anonymous>)
    at mapIdentityOverridesToSegments (flagsmith-engine/evaluation/evaluationContext/mappers.js:130:81)
    at mapEnvironmentModelToEvaluationContext (flagsmith-engine/evaluation/evaluationContext/mappers.js:69:36)
    at getEvaluationContext (flagsmith-engine/evaluation/evaluationContext/mappers.js:9:32)
    at Flagsmith.getIdentityFlagsFromDocument (sdk/index.js:385:63)
    at async Flagsmith.getIdentityFlags (sdk/index.js:192:24)

The error is thrown while building the evaluation context, before any specific flag is read, so
it fails getIdentityFlags() for every flag in the environment — not only the multivariate one.

7.0.3: no error, but the value of the multivariate flag comes back as null (the override's
base feature_state_value) instead of one of the configured variant values.

Expected behaviour

getIdentityFlags() should resolve the multivariate flag to one of its variant values (the deterministic percentage split), matching what remote evaluation returns, without throwing.

Thank you in advance for your help

Dominant language
TypeScript
Stars
30
Forks
27
Avg merge
20h 52m
Merged PRs (30d)
6

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