Handling exception inside Workflow Context Provider

[OvyDev]

How do Elsa handle exception inside SaveAsync / LoadAsync method in WorkflowContextProvider ?

I was trying to leverage workflow context as in the guide: load workflow context at the beginning, manipulate workflow context inside activity execution, and then save workflow context. What happens if exception was thrown when saving?

[OvyDev]

So it seems to me Elsa will retry several times and workflow status when idle. What actually happens when a workflow is idle? Will it retries again after sometime ? Or is there any API to continue/manually retry or modify this behavior?

[sfmskywalker]

That's a great question. I just looked into it, and it turns out there is no error handling whatsoever. Which is potentially a big issue, depending on what part is invoking the workflow.

For example, if the workflow is triggered via HTTP, no harm is done - the request will fail with an HTTP 500 - Internal Server Error.

But when a workflow is triggered from a message consumer, the consumer will be invoked repeatedly, depending on the retry policy in place.

So I think what we should do is add exception handling that puts the workflow in a faulted state. If a user wants to prevent that from happening, they can implement their own try/catch handler within their workflow context provider and e.g. retry the operation using a retry policy.

Thoughts?

[stale[bot]]

This issue has been automatically marked as stale because it has not had recent activity. It will be closed if no further activity occurs. Thank you for your contributions.

[Nokecy]

any update ?

[sfmskywalker]

@Nokecy thanks for asking, looks like this issue got stale and then closed. No progress has been made as of yet.

[Nokecy]

any idea ？ @sfmskywalker