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Temporal .NET SDK
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Temporal .NET SDK

NuGet MIT

Temporal is a distributed, scalable, durable, and highly available orchestration engine used to execute asynchronous, long-running business logic in a scalable and resilient way.

"Temporal .NET SDK" is the framework for authoring workflows and activities using .NET programming languages.

Also see:

Extensions:

Contents

Quick Start

Installation

Add the Temporalio package from NuGet. For example, using the dotnet CLI:

dotnet add package Temporalio

If you are using .NET Framework or a non-standard target platform, see the Built-in Native Shared Library section later for additional information.

NOTE: This README is for the current branch and not necessarily what's released on NuGet.

Implementing a Workflow and Activity

Assuming the ImplicitUsings is enabled, create an activity by putting the following in MyActivities.cs:

namespace MyNamespace;

using Temporalio.Activities;

public class MyActivities
{
    // Activities can be async and/or static too! We just demonstrate instance
    // methods since many will use them that way.
    [Activity]
    public string SayHello(string name) => $"Hello, {name}!";
}

That creates the activity. Now to create the workflow, put the following in SayHelloWorkflow.workflow.cs:

namespace MyNamespace;

using Temporalio.Workflows;

[Workflow]
public class SayHelloWorkflow
{
    [WorkflowRun]
    public async Task<string> RunAsync(string name)
    {
        // This workflow just runs a simple activity to completion.
        // StartActivityAsync could be used to just start and there are many
        // other things that you can do inside a workflow.
        return await Workflow.ExecuteActivityAsync(
            // This is a lambda expression where the instance is typed. If this
            // were static, you wouldn't need a parameter.
            (MyActivities act) => act.SayHello(name),
            new() { ScheduleToCloseTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5) });
    }
}

This is a simple workflow that executes the SayHello activity.

Running a Worker

To run this in a worker, put the following in Program.cs:

using MyNamespace;
using Temporalio.Client;
using Temporalio.Worker;

// Create a client to localhost on "default" namespace
var client = await TemporalClient.ConnectAsync(new("localhost:7233"));

// Cancellation token to shutdown worker on ctrl+c
using var tokenSource = new CancellationTokenSource();
Console.CancelKeyPress += (_, eventArgs) =>
{
    tokenSource.Cancel();
    eventArgs.Cancel = true;
};

// Create an activity instance since we have instance activities. If we had
// all static activities, we could just reference those directly.
var activities = new MyActivities();

// Create worker with the activity and workflow registered
using var worker = new TemporalWorker(
    client,
    new TemporalWorkerOptions("my-task-queue").
        AddActivity(activities.SayHello).
        AddWorkflow<SayHelloWorkflow>());

// Run worker until cancelled
Console.WriteLine("Running worker");
try
{
    await worker.ExecuteAsync(tokenSource.Token);
}
catch (OperationCanceledException)
{
    Console.WriteLine("Worker cancelled");
}

When executed, this will listen for Temporal server requests to perform workflow and activity invocations.

Executing a Workflow

To start and wait on a workflow result, with the worker program running elsewhere, put the following in a different project's Program.cs that references the worker project:

using MyNamespace;
using Temporalio.Client;

// Create a client to localhost on "default" namespace
var client = await TemporalClient.ConnectAsync(new("localhost:7233"));

// Run workflow
var result = await client.ExecuteWorkflowAsync(
    (SayHelloWorkflow wf) => wf.RunAsync("Temporal"),
    new(id: "my-workflow-id", taskQueue: "my-task-queue"));

Console.WriteLine("Workflow result: {0}", result);

This will output:

Workflow result: Hello, Temporal!

Usage

Clients

A client can be created and used to start a workflow. For example:

using MyNamespace;
using Temporalio.Client;

// Create client connected to server at the given address and namespace
var client = await TemporalClient.ConnectAsync(new()
{
    TargetHost = "localhost:7233",
    Namespace = "my-namespace",
});

// Start a workflow
var handle = await client.StartWorkflowAsync(
    (MyWorkflow wf) => wf.RunAsync("some workflow argument"),
    new() { ID = "my-workflow-id", TaskQueue = "my-task-queue" });

// Wait for a result
var result = await handle.GetResultAsync();
Console.WriteLine("Result: {0}", result);

Notes about the above code:

Cloud Client Using MTLS

Assuming a client certificate is present at my-cert.pem and a client key is present at my-key.pem, this is how to connect to Temporal Cloud:

using Temporalio.Client;

var client = await TemporalClient.ConnectAsync(new("my-namespace.a1b2c.tmprl.cloud:7233")
{
    Namespace = "my-namespace.a1b2c",
    Tls = new()
    {
        ClientCert = await File.ReadAllBytesAsync("my-cert.pem"),
        ClientPrivateKey = await File.ReadAllBytesAsync("my-key.pem"),
    },
});

Client Dependency Injection

To create clients for use with dependency injection, see the Temporalio.Extensions.Hosting project which has extension methods for creating singleton clients lazily on service collections.

For manually creating clients for dependency injection, users may prefer TemporalClient.CreateLazy which is a synchronous method which creates a client that does not attempt to connect until the first call is made on it. This can be helpful for dependency injection but beware that deferring connection until later can make it hard to see issues with connection parameters as early as may be expected. However, connection must be made before a worker is created with it.

Data Conversion

Data converters are used to convert raw Temporal payloads to/from actual .NET types. A custom data converter can be set via the DataConverter option when creating a client. Data converters are a combination of payload converters, payload codecs, and failure converters. Payload converters convert .NET values to/from serialized bytes. Payload codecs convert bytes to bytes (e.g. for compression or encryption). Failure converters convert exceptions to/from serialized failures.

Data converters are in the Temporalio.Converters namespace. The default data converter uses a default payload converter, which supports the following types:

Custom converters can be created for all uses. For example, to create client with a data converter that converts all C# property names to camel case, you would:

using System.Text.Json;
using Temporalio.Client;
using Temporalio.Converters;

public class CamelCasePayloadConverter : DefaultPayloadConverter
{
    public CamelCasePayloadConverter()
      : base(new JsonSerializerOptions { PropertyNamingPolicy = JsonNamingPolicy.CamelCase })
    {
    }
}

var client = await TemporalClient.ConnectAsync(new()
{
    TargetHost = "localhost:7233",
    Namespace = "my-namespace",
    DataConverter = DataConverter.Default with { PayloadConverter = new CamelCasePayloadConverter() },
});

Workers

Workers host workflows and/or activities. Here's how to run a worker:

using MyNamespace;
using Temporalio.Client;
using Temporalio.Worker;

// Create client
var client = await TemporalClient.ConnectAsync(new ()
{
    TargetHost = "localhost:7233",
    Namespace = "my-namespace",
});

// Create worker
using var worker = new TemporalWorker(
    client,
    new TemporalWorkerOptions("my-task-queue").
        AddActivity(MyActivities.MyActivity).
        AddWorkflow<MyWorkflow>());

// Run worker until Ctrl+C
using var cts = new CancellationTokenSource();
Console.CancelKeyPress += (sender, eventArgs) =>
{
    eventArgs.Cancel = true;
    cts.Cancel();
};
await worker.ExecuteAsync(cts.Token);

Notes about the above code:

Worker as Generic Host

See the Temporalio.Extensions.Hosting project for support for worker services and client/activity dependency injection.

Workflows

Workflow Definition

Workflows are defined as classes or interfaces with a [Workflow] attribute. The entry point method for a workflow has the [WorkflowRun] attribute. Methods for signals and queries have the [WorkflowSignal] and [WorkflowQuery] attributes respectively. Here is an example of a workflow definition:

using Microsoft.Extensions.Logging;
using Temporalio.Workflow;

public record GreetingParams(string Salutation = "Hello", string Name = "<unknown>");

[Workflow]
public class GreetingWorkflow
{
    private string? currentGreeting;
    private GreetingParams? greetingParamsUpdate;
    private bool complete;

    [WorkflowRun]
    public async Task<string> RunAsync(GreetingParams initialParams)
    {
        var greetingParams = initialParams;
        while (true)
        {
            // Call activity to create greeting and store as field
            currentGreeting = await Workflow.ExecuteActivityAsync(
                // This is a static activity method. If it were an instance
                // method, a typed parameter can be accepted in the lambda call.
                () => GreetingActivities.CreateGreeting(greetingParams),
                new() { ScheduleToCloseTimeout = TimeSpan.FromMinutes(5) });
            Workflow.Logger.LogDebug("Greeting set to {Greeting}", currentGreeting);

            // Wait for param update or complete signal. Note, cancellation can
            // occur by default on WaitConditionAsync calls so cancellation
            // token does not need to be passed explicitly.
            var waitUpdate = Workflow.WaitConditionAsync(() => greetingParamsUpdate != null);
            var waitComplete = Workflow.WaitConditionAsync(() => complete);
            if (waitComplete == await Task.WhenAny(waitUpdate, waitComplete))
            {
                // Just return the greeting
                return currentGreeting!;
            }
            // We know it was an update, so update it and continue
            greetingParams = greetingParamsUpdate!;
            greetingParamsUpdate = null;
        }
    }

    // WARNING: Workflow updates are experimental
    [WorkflowUpdate]
    public async Task UpdateGreetingParamsAsync(GreetingParams greetingParams) =>
      this.greetingParamsUpdate = greetingParams;

    [WorkflowSignal]
    public async Task CompleteWithGreetingAsync() => this.complete = true;

    [WorkflowQuery]
    public string CurrentGreeting() => currentGreeting;
}

Notes about the above code:

Attributes that can be applied:

Workflow Inheritance

Workflows can inherit from interfaces and base classes. Callers can use these interfaces to make calls for a workflow without the implementation present. This can be valuable in separating logic, but there are some details that should be noted.

[Workflow] and [WorkflowRun] attributes are never inherited and must be defined on item that is actually registered with the worker. This means even if an interface or base class has these, they must also be present on the final implementing class. So if a base class has a full [WorkflowRun] implementation, the subclass must override that method, set [WorkflowRun] on the override, and then it can delegate to the base class. This explicit non-inheritance strategy was intentionally done to avoid diamond problems with workflows and to let readers clearly know whether a class is a workflow (including the name defaulted) and what its entry point is. A workflow can only have one [WorkflowRun] method.

[WorkflowSignal], [WorkflowQuery], and [WorkflowUpdate] methods can be inherited from base classes/interfaces if the method is not overridden. However, if the method is declared in the subclass, it must also have these attributes. The attributes themselves are not inherited.

Running Workflows

To start a workflow from a client, you can StartWorkflowAsync with a lambda expression and then use the resulting handle:

// Start the workflow
var arg = new GreetingParams(Name: "Temporal");
var handle = await client.StartWorkflowAsync(
    (GreetingWorkflow wf) => wf.RunAsync(arg),
    new(id: "my-workflow-id", taskQueue: "my-task-queue"));
// Check current greeting via query
Console.WriteLine(
    "Current greeting: {0}",
    await handle.QueryAsync(wf => wf.CurrentGreeting()));
// Change the params via update
var updateArg = new GreetingParams(Salutation: "Aloha", Name: "John");
await handle.ExecuteUpdateAsync(wf => wf.UpdateGreetingParamsAsync(updateArg));
// Tell it to complete via signal
await handle.SignalAsync(wf => wf.CompleteWithGreetingAsync());
// Wait for workflow result
Console.WriteLine(
    "Final greeting: {0}",
    await handle.GetResultAsync());

Some things to note about the above code:

Invoking Activities

Invoking Child Workflows

Timers and Conditions

Workflow Task Scheduling and Cancellation

Workflows are backed by a custom, deterministic TaskScheduler. All async calls inside a workflow must use this scheduler (i.e. TaskScheduler.Current) and not the default thread-pool-based one (i.e. TaskScheduler.Default). See "Workflow Logic Constraints" on what to avoid to make sure the proper task scheduler is used.

Every workflow contains a cancellation token at Workflow.CancellationToken. This token is cancelled when the workflow is cancelled. For all workflow calls that accept a cancellation token, this is the default. So if a workflow is waiting on ExecuteActivityAsync and the workflow is cancelled, that cancellation will propagate to the waiting activity.

Cancellation token sources may be used to perform cancellation more specifically. A cancellation token derived from the workflow one can be created via CancellationTokenSource.CreateLinkedTokenSource(Workflow.CancellationToken). Then that source can be used to cancel something more specifically. Or, in cases where cleanup code may need to be run during cancellation such as in a finally block, a new unlinked cancellation token source can be constructed that will not be seen as cancelled even though the workflow is cancelled.

Like in other areas of .NET, cancellation tokens must be respected in order to properly cancel the workflow. Yet for most use cases where await calls yield to Temporal, the default cancellation token at the workflow level is good enough.

Workflow Utilities

In addition to the pieces documented above, additional properties/methods are statically available on Workflow that can be used from workflows including:

Workflow Exceptions

The default behavior can be customized at the worker level for all workflows via the TemporalWorkerOptions.WorkflowFailureExceptionTypes property or per workflow via the FailureExceptionTypes property on the WorkflowAttribute. When a workflow encounters a "workflow task" fail (i.e. suspend), it will first check either of these collections to see if the exception is an instance of any of the types and if so, will turn into a workflow/update failure. As a special case, when a non-deterministic exception occurs and Temporalio.Exceptions.WorkflowNondeterminismException is assignable to any of the types in the collection, that too will turn into a workflow/update failure. However non-deterministic exceptions that match during update handlers become workflow failures not update failures like other exceptions because a non-deterministic exception is an entire-workflow-failure situation.

⚠️ WARNING: Customizing the default behavior is currently experimental and the default behavior may change in the future.

Workflow Logic Constraints

Temporal Workflows must be deterministic which includes .NET workflows. This means there are several things workflows cannot do such as:

In the future, an analyzer may be written to help catch some of these mistakes at compile time. In the meantime, due to .NET's lack of a sandbox, there is not a good way to prevent non-deterministic calls so developers need to be vigilant.

.NET Task Determinism

Some calls in .NET do unsuspecting non-deterministic things and are easy to accidentally use. This is especially true with Tasks. Temporal requires that the deterministic TaskScheduler.Current is used, but many .NET async calls will use TaskScheduler.Default implicitly (and some analyzers even encourage this). Here are some known gotchas to avoid with .NET tasks inside of workflows:

In order to help catch wrong scheduler use, by default the Temporal .NET SDK adds an event source listener for info-level task events. While this technically receives events from all uses of tasks in the process, we make sure to ignore anything that is not running in a workflow in a high performant way (basically one thread local check). For code that does run in a workflow and accidentally starts a task in another scheduler, an InvalidWorkflowOperationException will be thrown which "pauses" the workflow (fails the workflow task which continually retries until the code is fixed.). This is unfortunately a runtime-only check, but can help catch mistakes early. If this needs to be turned off for any reason, set DisableWorkflowTracingEventListener to true in worker options.

In the near future for modern .NET versions we hope to use the new TimeProvider API which will allow us to control current time and timers.

Workflow .editorconfig

Since workflow code follows some different logic rules than regular C# code, there are some common analyzer rules out there that developers may want to disable. To ensure these are only disabled for workflows, current recommendation is to use the .workflow.cs extension for files containing workflows.

Here are the rules to disable:

Here is the .editorconfig snippet for the above which may frequently change as we learn more:

##### Configuration specific for Temporal workflows #####
[*.workflow.cs]

# We use getters for queries, they cannot be properties
dotnet_diagnostic.CA1024.severity = none

# Don't force workflows to have static methods
dotnet_diagnostic.CA1822.severity = none

# Do not need ConfigureAwait for workflows
dotnet_diagnostic.CA2007.severity = none

# Do not need task scheduler for workflows
dotnet_diagnostic.CA2008.severity = none

# Workflow randomness is intentionally deterministic
dotnet_diagnostic.CA5394.severity = none

# Allow async methods to not have await in them
dotnet_diagnostic.CS1998.severity = none

# Don't avoid, but rather encourage things using TaskScheduler.Current in workflows
dotnet_diagnostic.VSTHRD105.severity = none

Workflow Testing

Workflow testing can be done in an integration-test fashion against a real server, however it is hard to simulate timeouts and other long time-based code. Using the time-skipping workflow test environment can help there.

A non-time-skipping Temporalio.Testing.WorkflowEnvironment can be started via StartLocalAsync which supports all standard Temporal features. It is actually a real Temporal server lazily downloaded on first use and run as a sub-process in the background.

A time-skipping Temporalio.Testing.WorkflowEnvironment can be started via StartTimeSkippingAsync which is a reimplementation of the Temporal server with special time skipping capabilities. This too lazily downloads the process to run when first called. Note, this class is not thread safe nor safe for use with independent tests. It can be reused, but only for one test at a time because time skipping is locked/unlocked at the environment level.

Automatic Time Skipping

Anytime a workflow result is waiting on, the time-skipping server automatically advances to the next event it can. To manually advance time before waiting on the result of the workflow, the WorkflowEnvironment.DelayAsync method can be used. If an activity is running, time-skipping is disabled.

Here's a simple example of a workflow that sleeps for 24 hours:

using Temporalio.Workflows;

[Workflow]
public class WaitADayWorkflow
{
    [WorkflowRun]
    public async Task<string> RunAsync()
    {
        await Workflow.DelayAsync(TimeSpan.FromDays(1));
        return "all done";
    }
}

A regular integration test of this workflow on a normal server would be way too slow. However, the time-skipping server automatically skips to the next event when we wait on the result. Here's a test for that workflow:

using Temporalio.Testing;
using Temporalio.Worker;

[Fact]
public async Task WaitADayWorkflow_SimpleRun_Succeeds()
{
    await using var env = await WorkflowEnvironment.StartTimeSkippingAsync();
    using var worker = new TemporalWorker(
      env.Client,
      new TemporalWorkerOptions($"task-queue-{Guid.NewGuid()}").
          AddWorkflow<WaitADayWorkflow>());
    await worker.ExecuteAsync(async () =>
    {
        var result = await env.Client.ExecuteWorkflowAsync(
            (WaitADayWorkflow wf) => wf.RunAsync(),
            new(id: $"wf-{Guid.NewGuid()}", taskQueue: worker.Options.TaskQueue!));
        Assert.Equal("all done", result);
    });
}

This test will run almost instantly. This is because by calling ExecuteWorkflowAsync on our client, we are actually calling StartWorkflowAsync + GetResultAsync, and GetResultAsync automatically skips time as much as it can (basically until the end of the workflow or until an activity is run).

To disable automatic time-skipping while waiting for a workflow result, run code as a lambda passed to env.WithAutoTimeSkippingDisabled or env.WithAutoTimeSkippingDisabledAsync.

Manual Time Skipping

Until a workflow is waited on, all time skipping in the time-skipping environment is done manually via WorkflowEnvironment.DelayAsync.

Here's a workflow that waits for a signal or times out:

using Temporalio.Workflows;

[Workflow]
public class SignalWorkflow
{
    private bool signalReceived = false;

    [WorkflowRun]
    public async Task<string> RunAsync()
    {
        // Wait for signal or timeout in 45 seconds
        if (Workflow.WaitConditionAsync(() => signalReceived, TimeSpan.FromSeconds(45)))
        {
            return "got signal";
        }
        return "got timeout";
    }

    [WorkflowSignal]
    public async Task SomeSignalAsync() => signalReceived = true;
}

To test a normal signal, you might:

using Temporalio.Testing;
using Temporalio.Worker;

[Fact]
public async Task SignalWorkflow_SendSignal_HasExpectedResult()
{
    await using var env = WorkflowEnvironment.StartTimeSkippingAsync();
    using var worker = new TemporalWorker(
        env.Client,
        new TemporalWorkerOptions($"task-queue-{Guid.NewGuid()}").
            AddWorkflow<SignalWorkflow>());
    await worker.ExecuteAsync(async () =>
    {
        var handle = await env.Client.StartWorkflowAsync(
            (SignalWorkflow wf) => wf.RunAsync(),
            new(id: $"wf-{Guid.NewGuid()}", taskQueue: worker.Options.TaskQueue!));
        await handle.SignalAsync(wf => wf.SomeSignalAsync());
        Assert.Equal("got signal", await handle.GetResultAsync());
    });
}

But how would you test the timeout part? Like so:

using Temporalio.Testing;
using Temporalio.Worker;

[Fact]
public async Task SignalWorkflow_SignalTimeout_HasExpectedResult()
{
    await using var env = WorkflowEnvironment.StartTimeSkippingAsync();
    using var worker = new TemporalWorker(
        env.Client,
        new TemporalWorkerOptions($"task-queue-{Guid.NewGuid()}").
            AddWorkflow<SignalWorkflow>());
    await worker.ExecuteAsync(async () =>
    {
        var handle = await env.Client.StartWorkflowAsync(
            (SignalWorkflow wf) => wf.RunAsync(),
            new(id: $"wf-{Guid.NewGuid()}", taskQueue: worker.Options.TaskQueue!));
        await env.DelayAsync(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(50));
        Assert.Equal("got timeout", await handle.GetResultAsync());
    });
}
Mocking Activities

When testing workflows, often you don't want to actually run the activities. Activities are just functions with the [Activity] attribute. Simply write different/empty/fake/asserting ones and pass those to the worker to have different activities called during the test.

Workflow Replay

Given a workflow's history, it can be replayed locally to check for things like non-determinism errors. For example, assuming the history parameter below is given a JSON string of history exported from the CLI or web UI, the following function will replay it:

using Temporalio;
using Temporalio.Worker;

public static async Task ReplayFromJsonAsync(string historyJson)
{
    var replayer = new WorkflowReplayer(
      new WorkflowReplayerOptions().AddWorkflow<MyWorkflow>());
    await replayer.ReplayWorkflowAsync(WorkflowHistory.FromJson("my-workflow-id", historyJson));
}

If there is a non-determinism, this will throw an exception.

Workflow history can be loaded from more than just JSON. It can be fetched individually from a workflow handle, or even in a list. For example, the following code will check that all workflow histories for a certain workflow type (i.e. workflow class) are safe with the current workflow code.

using Temporalio;
using Temporalio.Client;
using Temporalio.Worker;

public static async Task CheckPastHistoriesAysnc(ITemporalClient client)
{
    var replayer = new WorkflowReplayer(
      new WorkflowReplayerOptions().AddWorkflow<MyWorkflow>());
    var listIter = client.ListWorkflowHistoriesAsync("WorkflowType = 'SayHello'");
    await foreach (var result in replayer.ReplayWorkflowsAsync(listIter))
    {
        if (result.ReplayFailure != null)
        {
            ExceptionDispatchInfo.Throw(result.ReplayFailure);
        }
    }
}

Activities

Activity Definition

Activities are methods with the [Activity] annotation like so:

namespace MyNamespace;

using System.Net.Http;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
using System.Timers;
using Temporalio.Activities;

public static class MyActivities
{
    private static readonly HttpClient client = new();

    [Activity]
    public static async Task<string> GetPageAsync(string url)
    {
        // Heartbeat every 2s
        using var timer = new Timer(2000)
        {
            AutoReset = true,
            Enabled = true,
        };
        timer.Elapsed += (sender, eventArgs) => ActivityExecutionContext.Current.Heartbeat();

        // Issue our HTTP call
        using var response = await client.GetAsync(url, ActivityExecutionContext.Current.CancellationToken);
        response.EnsureSuccessStatusCode();
        return await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync(ActivityExecutionContext.Current.CancellationToken);
    }
}

Notes about activity definitions:

Activity Dependency Injection

To have activity classes instantiated via a DI container to support dependency injection, see the Temporalio.Extensions.Hosting project which supports worker services in addition to activity dependency injection.

Activity Execution Context

During activity execution, an async-local activity context is available via ActivityExecutionContext.Current. This will throw if not currently in an activity context (which can be checked with ActivityExecutionContext.HasCurrent). It contains the following important members:

Activity Heartbeating and Cancellation

In order for a non-local activity to be notified of cancellation requests, it must invoke ActivityExecutionContext.Current.Heartbeat(). It is strongly recommended that all but the fastest executing activities call this function regularly.

In addition to obtaining cancellation information, heartbeats also support detail data that is persisted on the server for retrieval during activity retry. If an activity calls ActivityExecutionContext.Current.Heartbeat(123) and then fails and is retried, ActivityExecutionContext.Current.Info.HeartbeatDetails will contain the last detail payloads. A helper can be used to convert, so await ActivityExecutionContext.Current.Info.HeartbeatDetailAtAsync<int>(0) would give 123 on the next attempt.

Heartbeating has no effect on local activities.

Activity Worker Shutdown

An activity can react to a worker shutdown specifically.

Upon worker shutdown, ActivityExecutionContext.WorkerShutdownToken is cancelled. Then the worker will wait a grace period set by the GracefulShutdownTimeout worker option (default as 0) before issuing actual cancellation to all still-running activities via ActivityExecutionContext.CancellationToken.

Worker shutdown will wait on all activities to complete, so if a long-running activity does not respect cancellation, the shutdown may never complete.

Activity Testing

Unit testing an activity or any code that could run in an activity is done via the Temporalio.Testing.ActivityEnvironment class. Simply instantiate the class, and any function passed to RunAsync will be invoked inside the activity context. The following important members are available on the environment to affect the activity context:

OpenTelemetry Tracing Support

See the OpenTelemetry extension.

Built-in Native Shared Library

This SDK requires a built-in unmanaged, native shared library built in Rust. It is named temporal_sdk_bridge.dll on Windows, libtemporal_sdk_bridge.so on Linux, and libtemporal_sdk_bridge.dylib on macOS. This is automatically included when using modern versions of .NET on a common platform. If you are using .NET framework, you may have to explicitly set the platform to x64 or arm64 because AnyCPU will not choose the proper library.

Currently we only support RIDs linux-arm64, linux-x64, osx-arm64, osx-x64, and win-x64. Any other platforms needed (e.g. linux-musl-x64 on Alpine) will require a custom build.

The native shared library on Windows does require a Visual C++ runtime. Some containers, such as Windows Nano Server, do not include this runtime. If not available, users may have to manually copy this runtime (usually just vcruntime140.dll), depend on a NuGet package that has it, or install the Visual C++ runtime (often via Visual C++ Redistributable installation).

If the native shared library is not loading for whatever reason, the following error may appear:

System.DllNotFoundException: Unable to load DLL 'temporal_sdk_bridge' or one of its dependencies: The specified module could not be found.

See the earlier part of this section for details on what environments are supported.

Development

Build

Prerequisites:

With all prerequisites in place, run:

dotnet build

Or for release:

dotnet build --configuration Release

Code formatting

This project uses StyleCop analyzers with some overrides in .editorconfig. To format, run:

dotnet format

Can also run with --verify-no-changes to ensure it is formatted.

VisualStudio Code

When developing in vscode, the following JSON settings will enable StyleCop analyzers:

    "omnisharp.enableEditorConfigSupport": true,
    "omnisharp.enableRoslynAnalyzers": true

Testing

Run:

dotnet test

Can add options like:

To help debug native pieces and show full stdout/stderr, this is also available as an in-proc test program. Run:

dotnet run --project tests/Temporalio.Tests

Extra args can be added after --, e.g. -- -verbose would show verbose logs and -- --help would show other options. If the arguments are anything but --help, the current assembly is prepended to the args before sending to the xUnit runner.

The following environment variables can be set to override the environment:

Rebuilding Rust extension and interop layer

To regen core interop from header, install ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator like:

dotnet tool install --global ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator

Then, run:

ClangSharpPInvokeGenerator @src/Temporalio/Bridge/GenerateInterop.rsp

The Rust DLL is built automatically when the project is built. protoc may need to be on the PATH to build the Rust DLL.

This can be annoying to install on linux - so alternatively, publish your PR and you can download the patch from the windows build when it fails because of a mismatch. It uploads the patch as an artifact.

Regenerating protos

Must have protoc on the PATH. Note, for now users should use protoc 23.x until our GH action downloader can support later versions. Here is the latest 23.x release as of this writing.

Then:

dotnet run --project src/Temporalio.Api.Generator

Regenerating API docs

Install docfx, then run:

docfx src/Temporalio.ApiDoc/docfx.json