Add support for the Durable Functions Orchestration Client.

[JamesRandall]

Explore along with a strategy for durable functions in general.

[rameshjanjyam]

Hi.. I am planning to use durable functions and couldn't find a way to use the servicecollection that is built in functionappconfiguration class inside the durable function. is it possible?

[joaoantunes]

Hi, I will use durable functions on a project to make function chaining, async flows & monitor (timeouts). For what I see there is no support for all the durable functions concepts right? ActivityFunction, Orchestration, Contexts, Clients, etc,

For now, I see that we will need: 1- Start a new orchestration (from an Http Trigger function) - DurableOrchestrationClient 2- Implement the orchestration flow - using the DurableOrchestrationContext 3- Implement different Activity triggers - we will need the input pass by the Orchestration 4- Resume the orchestration from an Http Trigger

I know that abstract all these concepts in FunctionMonkey, it will take some time since for now is not possible to have them what do you advise if we want to have both Durable functions & FunctionMonkey?

Solution A:

• Every function that interacts with Durable functions concepts can't be registered using the function monkey approach but needs to use the Microsoft way. If a certain Azure function (using monkey) needs to start an orchestration use a HttpTrigger for another function (no monkey) to start orchestration. To resume use some concept (this will have performance/cost impact)

Solution B:

• For the orchestrations use Microsoft API
• Register ActivityTriggers as a special Trigger. Need to be implemented on FunctionMonkey and inject the input to the ICommandHandler (is this hard?
• Have a simple Client (wrapper of ? DurableOrchestrationClient) just to start an orchestration from a CommandHandler.
• To be able to resume Orchestration improve the Client wrapper to support also raise events.

Solution C:

• Don't use durable functions at all, use Service bus to chain functions (?) and for workflows use (what?)

Any suggestion each approach should I use A, B, C (or another one)?

I think the approach B would be the best commitment, but to do that, I would need to have functionalities that don't exist on function monkey. I would like to help to develop them if you are interested, and hope my IT skills would be enough :)