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07_create_activity_functions_services.md

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Lab 7 - Creating the activity functions for the service calls

Goal

The goal of this lab is to implement the activities which call out to existing XASA services and call these from the orchestrator.

Steps

1. Retrieving the Estimated Kinetic Energy

The first activity function needs to make a call to an HTTP endpoint to retrieve the estimated kinetic energy expressed in megaton TNT.

An HTTP POST need to be done to https://demo-neo.azure-api.net/neo/estimate/energy with a payload of the DetectedNEOEvent object in the body. A KineticEnergyResult object will be returned.

1.1 Adding a new class for the Estimated Kinetic Energy service call

Add a new class, EstimateKineticEnergyActivity, and add the following method definition which makes it an activity function:

[FunctionName(nameof(EstimateKineticEnergyActivity))]
public async Task<KineticEnergyResult> Run(
    [ActivityTrigger] DetectedNeoEvent neoEvent,
    ILogger logger)
{
}

1.2 Injecting the IHTTPClientFactory

In order to make HTTP calls we require a HttpClient object. The 'old way' of doing this was to use a static private HttpClient field. However, since Azure Functions now supports dependency injection we can inject an IHttpClientFactory into this class and the factory manages the lifetime of the HttpClient.

  • Install the Microsoft.Extensions.Http NuGet package. This contains the IHttpClientFactory interface.
  • Add a constructor to the EstimateKineticEnergyActivity class and inject IHttpClientFactory.
  • Add a private readonly field of type HttpClient to the class.
  • Set this field in the constructor by using the CreateClient() method of the IHttpClientFactory.
private readonly HttpClient client;

public EstimateKineticEnergyActivity(IHttpClientFactory httpClientFactory)
{
    client = httpClientFactory.CreateClient();
}

Now the client can be used in the function method to do a PostAsJsonAsync() call to the EstimateKineticEnergy endpoint. Note that we also need to pass in the ApiManagementKey in the Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header.

When we do the post to the endpoint, make sure to verify on a success status code on the response. If the response is not successful an exception should be thrown from the activity.

The implementation of the function should be something like this:

var kineticEnergyEndpoint = new Uri(Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("KineticEnergyEndpoint"));
var apiManagementKey = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("ApiManagementKey");
client.DefaultRequestHeaders.Add("Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key", apiManagementKey);
var response = await client.PostAsJsonAsync(kineticEnergyEndpoint, neoEvent);
if (!response.IsSuccessStatusCode)
{
    var content = await response.Content.ReadAsStringAsync();
    throw new FunctionFailedException(content);
}
var result = await response.Content.ReadAsAsync<KineticEnergyResult>();

return result;

Make sure that the KineticEnergyEndpoint (https://demo-neo.azure-api.net/neo/estimate/energy) and the ApiManagementKey (in the json object from Lab 3) values are placed in the local.settings.json file as application settings.

1.3 Calling the activity from the orchestration

Let's return to the NeoEventProcessingOrchestrator class and call the EstimateKineticEnergyActivity function.

The basic syntax for calling an activity with a return type is:

var kineticEnergy = await context.CallActivityAsync<KineticEnergyResult>(
        nameof(EstimateKineticEnergyActivity),
        detectedNeoEvent);

If we'd run the Function App now, we'll get exceptions (like the one below) since the IHttpClientFactory dependency has not been registered yet.

Microsoft.Extensions.DependencyInjection.Abstractions: Unable to resolve service for type 'System.Net.Http.IHttpClientFactory' while attempting to activate '<NAME_OF_FUNCTION>'.

1.4 Registering the HTTPClientFactory in Startup

In order to use dependency injection in Azure Functions we need to go through the following steps:

  • Add a reference to the Microsoft.Azure.Functions.Extensions NuGet package.
  • Add a new class (e.g Startup.cs) to the Function App and inherit from FunctionsStartup.
  • Add the FunctionsStartup attribute on the assembly level and provide the type of the Startup class as the argument.
  • Implement the Configure method and use the AddHttpClient() extension method on the builder.Services.

The result should look like this:

[assembly: FunctionsStartup(typeof(Startup))]
namespace Demo.NEO.EventProcessing.Application
{
    public class Startup : FunctionsStartup
    {
        public override void Configure(IFunctionsHostBuilder builder)
        {
            builder.Services.AddHttpClient();
        }
    }
}

If we run the Function App for a while we'll notice (in the Azure Functions runtime output) that the activity function fails in some occasions. Why is that?

1.5 Dealing with failure

A good solution to cope with failing activity functions in this case is to retry the activity. The Durable Functions API already has built-in support for this using the CallActivityWithRetryAsync method:

var kineticEnergy = await context.CallActivityWithRetryAsync<KineticEnergyResult>(
        nameof(EstimateKineticEnergyActivity),
        new RetryOptions(TimeSpan.FromSeconds(10), 5), 
        detectedNeoEvent);

Notice the different method name and the RetryOptions argument. Go to the definition of the RetryOptions type to see which properties are available.

Now update the orchestrator function with the CallActivityWithRetryAsync method and run the Function App.

2. Retrieving the Impact Probability

Repeat the same substeps as in Step 1 (excl the Startup class) but now name the function EstimateImpactProbabilityActivity and do a post to the https://demo-neo.azure-api.net/neo/estimate/probability endpoint. This also uses a DetectedNeoEvent as the body and uses the same Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header. An ImpactProbabilityResult object will be returned.

3. Retrieving the Torino impact

Repeat the same substeps as in Step 1 (excl the Startup class) but now but now name the function EstimateTorinoImpactActivity and do a post to the https://demo-neo.azure-api.net/neo/estimate/torino endpoint. This requires a TorinoImpactRequest object as the body. The request can be built by combining the KineticEnergyResult and ImpactProbabilityResult objects.

The TorinoImpact endpoint returns an TorinoImpactResult. Again the same Ocp-Apim-Subscription-Key header is used for authentication.

4. Return the ProcessedNeoEvent

The users of your application are interested in ProcessedNeoEvent objects. These are objects built up of DetectedNeoEvents and the results from the three service calls we just implemented.

Once all three activities have been implemented create a new instance of the ProcessedNeoEvent and for now return this from the orchestrator.

Now run/debug your local Function App by using the HttpTrigger client function.

Continue to the next lab to create the activity to store the processed data.