Enable/Disable application features

[posta07]

I have a question regarding possible implementation alternatives to the one I'm currently using.

The requirement: to be able to turn on/off particular features of an application at run time.

Right now, we have a class that we call "applicationProperties" with a bunch of different properties (isFeatureXEnabled, isFeatureYEnabled, etc, etc) which the application code (and UI code in some cases) is using to determine whether or not to turn on/off a particular feature. What's nice is that we can export the "applicationProperties" file as an MBean and change/update its values at run time through the JMX console.

My question:
At the moment, our application code is riddled with awful if/else statements specifying whether a particular feature should be enabled.
E.G.:

if(isFeatureXEnabled()){
.. do something...
}

other parts of the app:

if(isFeatureYEnabled()){
.. do something..
}

etc...

Has anyone else run into a requirement such as this (ability to turn on/off features at run-time) without polluting and littering their code base with if/else statements?

Thanks in advance for any input!

[whyBish]

It depends what you mean by turning a feature off. If you mean that when accessing it a user gets a security exception then maybe spring-security method interception. If you mean that a feature is no longer accessible in the first place ...