is it possible to run a command utility inside of an http-triggered azure function?

Question

We'd like to be able to promote this command tool to Azure.

Ideally, we'd have an Http-triggered function that accepts a body such as:

{ "document-location":"...", "filename":"myEncryptedPdf.pdf", "destination-location":"..."}

And it will then decrypt the file and move it to the intended destination.

Is it possible to run a command-line utility within an Azure Function?

Perhaps, the simplest example would be, if I had some tool.bat:

echo Hello world

I'd like to be able to run this inside of an Azure Function.

Answer 1

The simple answer is no, you cannot start another process from an Azure function directly (from within the code itself). However, there is a work around. You can use Azure Batch to execute a bat file on demand through the Azure Batch API. Unfortunately this does require a IaaS Virtual Machine in order to process the job, so it is not an ideal solution, but will achieve the functionality you are after.