does azure durable function support cron jobs

Question

Does azure durable function support corn jobs. I need a set of tasks to run every 5 mins. When going though the timer section of azure durable function did not see any example for setting cron job settings for durable functions

You can use a CRON trigger to _Start_ a Durable function (which may itself be eternal) This is indirectly explained here: https://stackoverflow.com/a/59582109/1690217 — Chris Schaller, Jun 18 '21 at 00:12

score 2 · Accepted Answer · answered Apr 17 '19 at 19:11

2

Depending on you scenario, you can use normal Timer Triggers by Functions (not Durable). Or you can use Eternal Orchestrations that wake up periodically by Durable.

answered Apr 17 '19 at 19:11

Thomas Schreiter

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score 0 · Answer 2 · answered Jun 29 '20 at 14:47

Yes and No,

Durable functions framework provides a way to run the orchestrator function periodically, refer below code

await context.CallActivityAsync("DoCleanup", null);

// sleep for one hour between cleanups
DateTime nextCleanup = context.CurrentUtcDateTime.AddHours(1);
await context.CreateTimer(nextCleanup, CancellationToken.None);

context.ContinueAsNew(null);

The above piece of code will call your activity function DoCleanup every hour.

The problem with normal timer trigger functions are they runs into overlap issue. for example if you want to run something every 1-minute and if your function execution takes 30 seconds then you will face overlap issues.

With durable the above problem is solved. It guarantees no overlap.

The only issue is this orchestration function needs to be externally triggered one time by some durable client and cannot be self started like timer trigger azure functions.

`

score 0 · Answer 3 · answered Oct 04 '22 at 18:39

Seems like things might have changed since the question was asked. Also, I didnt see a specific language you were using, so I am describing the procedure in python, but the same is applicable for the other supported languages.

I found that you can modify the template for "Timer trigger" function and the function itself to be able to act like a "Durable Functions HTTP starter". To replicate:

Create your functions (Orchestrator, Activity and Timer) from a template (here via CLI, but also via VS)

func new -t "Durable Functions orchestrator"
func new -t "Durable Functions activity"
func new -t "Timer trigger"

Modify the function.json in the Timer function to add the durableClient input.

{
  "scriptFile": "__init__.py",
  "bindings": [
    {
      "name": "mytimer",
      "type": "timerTrigger",
      "direction": "in",
      "schedule": "0 */5 * * * *"
    },
    {
      "name": "starter",
      "type": "durableClient",
      "direction": "in"
    }
  ]
}

Modify your function to act asynchronly and to use the input. If you named your function something different from the default DurableFunctionsOrchestrator you should modify the input to client.start_new to match what you named it

import logging
import azure.functions as func
import azure.durable_functions as df

async def main(mytimer: func.TimerRequest, starter: str) -> None:
 client = df.DurableOrchestrationClient(starter)
 instance_id = await client.start_new(
  'DurableFunctionsOrchestrator', None, None)
 logging.info(f"Started orchestration with ID = '{instance_id}'.")

Modify your requirements.txt to add azure-functions-durable

azure-functions
azure-functions-durable

Now you can deploy and watch it work

func azure functionapp publish labrix-househunt

Its working well for me!

does azure durable function support cron jobs

3 Answers3

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