Inngest

Inngest's durable functions replace queues, state management, and scheduling to enable any developer to write reliable step functions faster without touching infrastructure.

1. Write durable functions using any of our language SDKs
2. Run the Inngest Dev Server for a complete local development experience, with production parity.
3. Deploy your functions to your own infrastructure
4. Sync your application's functions with the Inngest Platform or a self-hosted Inngest server.
5. Inngest invokes your functions securely via HTTPS whenever triggering events are received.

An example durable function

Inngest Functions enable developers to run reliable background logic, from background jobs to complex workflows. An Inngest Function is composed of three key parts that provide robust support for retrying, scheduling, and coordinating complex sequences of operations:

• Triggers - Events, Cron schedules or webhook events that trigger the function.
• Flow Control - Configure how the function runs are enqueued and executed including concurrency, throttling, debouncing, rate limiting, and prioritization.
• Steps - Steps are fundamental building blocks of Inngest, turning your Inngest Functions into reliable workflows that can run for months and recover from failures.

Here is an example function that limits concurrency for each unique user id and performs two steps that will be retried on error:

export default inngest.createFunction(
  {
    id: "import-product-images",
    concurrency: {
      key: "event.data.userId",
      limit: 10
    }
  },
  { event: "shop/product.imported" },
  async ({ event, step }) => {
    // Here goes the business logic
    // By wrapping code in steps, each will be retried automatically on failure
    const s3Urls = await step.run("copy-images-to-s3", async () => {
      return copyAllImagesToS3(event.data.imageURLs);
    });
    // You can include numerous steps in your function
    await step.run("resize-images", async () => {
      await resizer.bulk({ urls: s3Urls, quality: 0.9, maxWidth: 1024 });
    })
  };
);

// Elsewhere in your code (e.g. in your API endpoint):
await inngest.send({
  name: "shop/product.imported",
  data: {
    userId: "01J8G44701QYGE0DH65PZM8DPM",
    imageURLs: [
      "https://useruploads.acme.com/q2345678/1094.jpg",
      "https://useruploads.acme.com/q2345678/1095.jpg"
    ],
  },
});

Learn more

• Getting started
• SDKs
• Project Architecture
• Self-hosting
• Community

Getting started

Run the Inngest Dev Server using our CLI:

npx inngest-cli@latest dev

Open the Inngest Dev Server dashboard at http://localhost:8288:

Follow our Next.js, Node.js or Python quick start guides.

Cloud sandboxes in local development (experimental)

With a CLI and JavaScript SDK build that supports Cloud sandboxes, log in once, then start the dev server from your project directory:

inngest login
inngest dev

Select a single existing Cloud development environment during login. Cloud sandboxes require a paid plan; on other plans, sandbox requests are rejected with a link to upgrade. The environment also needs a default VPC; branch-child environments without a VPC are not supported. No deployed Cloud app is required. To change environments, run inngest login --force.

Use inngest.sandboxes normally, or step.sandbox with sandboxMiddleware. No sandbox token or signing key is needed in your local application. Set INNGEST_DEV to your dev-server URL if it differs from the default. Only sandbox REST requests go to Cloud; functions, events, and runs stay local. The dev server uses your saved CLI login and refreshes credentials automatically. Cloud credentials remain in the CLI's OS credential store. On headless machines, inngest login --insecure-storage explicitly opts into private plaintext storage. Cloud sandbox routes only accept local connections; use a local port forward for remote development.

Sandboxes are real, billable Cloud resources. Stopping the dev server does not destroy them. The Sandboxes page lists resources created through this project's bridge and supports pause, resume, and explicit destroy. Their IDs are saved under ~/.config/inngest/dev-sandboxes (or INNGEST_CONFIG_DIR) independently of --persist. Restart from the same project directory with the same CLI environment selected to recover the list. Resources created elsewhere remain accessible through the SDK or Cloud dashboard.

The bridge requires loopback access and the dev server's own UI origin. For a remote dev server, use a local port forward; there is no public tunnel or sandbox access to your app's localhost. After an ambiguous connection failure, inspect the operation's state before repeating a command; the bridge does not retry it.

SDKs

• TypeScript / JavaScript (inngest-js) - Reference
• Python (inngest-py) - Reference
• Go (inngestgo) - Reference
• Kotlin / Java (inngest-kt)

Project Architecture

To understand how self-hosting works, it's valuable to understand the architecture and system components at a high level. We'll take a look at a simplified architecture diagram and walk through the system.

<br /> <p align="center"> <img src="https://raw.githubusercontent.com/inngest/inngest/main/.github/assets/architecture-2024-09-23.png" alt="System Architecture" width="660" /> </p>

• Event API - Receives events from SDKs via HTTP requests. Authenticates client requests via Event Keys. The Event API publishes event payloads to an internal event stream.
• Event stream - Acts as buffer between the Event API and the Runner.
• Runner - Consumes incoming events and performs several actions:
  • Scheduling of new “function runs” (aka jobs) given the event type, creating initial run state in the State store database. Runs are added to queues given the function's flow control configuration.
  • Resume functions paused via waitForEvent with matching expressions.