Azure Durable Functions: A Practical Guide

Understand the serverless model and how Azure Functions and Cosmos DB enable on-demand, scalable backends for apps, in contrast to traditional server-based architectures and provisioning.

Explore Azure's serverless landscape, from functions and durable functions to event-driven architectures, with pay-per-use scaling, container options, storage, monitoring, analytics, and API management.

durable functions extend Azure functions to build long running, stateful workflows in a serverless environment, manage storage and checkpoints, and provide centralized error handling through orchestrations.

Explore the serverless programming model and Azure serverless solutions, introduce durable functions as extensions that enable long running stateful workflows, and present the four function categories forming the durable foundation.

Set up Visual Studio Code with Azure extensions, build a Python durable function orchestrator plus durable client and activity functions, and configure storage and bindings for the function app.

Build on a local development setup and boilerplate code to implement Durable Functions, cover five workflows beginning with the function chaining workflow, and outline orchestration rules for the orchestrator function.

Store image analysis results in Cosmos DB via a durable function workflow, using images container and image_name partition key; upsert_item handles insert or update, tested end-to-end with Postman.

Implement a fan-out fan-in workflow with durable functions to parallelize processing of images, filter anomalies in a large data set, and aggregate results via the orchestrator and activity functions.

Explore how monitor workflow using durable functions enables dynamic polling intervals, avoids overlapping tasks, and simplifies error handling compared to timer-triggered functions.

Demonstrates a durable function monitor workflow that tracks a location's temperature against a threshold and sends an SMS alert via Twilio, using open weather APIs and a dynamic wait orchestrator.

Learn to build an Azure durable function app in VS Code with Python 3.9, creating a durable orchestrator and a post-only http starter that validates alert temperature and phone number.

design a deterministic orchestrator using durable timers to monitor city temperature via an activity function, alerting when the threshold is reached and polling every ten minutes.

Explore how an Azure durable functions orchestrator pauses for external events, handling human interactions like moderation and approvals with timeouts, escalation, and compensation logic.

Create a zen challenge activity function to generate a four-digit code and send it via Twilio SMS, wired through an output binding and an orchestrator in Azure Durable Functions.

Implement a challenge-response workflow with an Azure durable function orchestrator that sends a code via Twilio to a phone number and verifies on user reply or timer expiry.

Learn to implement durable entities with an increment counter in a function app, exposing create, read, update, and delete operations across multiple entity instances via a durable client and orchestrator.

Create a durable function app in Visual Studio Code with Python 3.9, define increment counter entity, and manage its state with operations like edit, reset, and get using orchestration context.