AWS Durable Functions Examples

This repository contains example projects demonstrating AWS Durable Functions - a Lambda extension that enables long-running, stateful workflows that can execute for up to one year.

Table of Contents

• About this Repo
• What are Durable Functions?
• Examples
• Getting Started
• Learning Resources
• License

About this Repo

This repo provides practical examples of AWS Durable Functions organized by industry and use case. Each example demonstrates real-world scenarios where durable execution patterns solve complex business problems that require long-running workflows, human-in-the-loop processes, or external system integrations.

The examples are designed to be:

• Industry-specific: Organized by vertical (Financial Services, Healthcare, Retail, etc.) to showcase relevant use cases
• Production-ready patterns: Demonstrate best practices for error handling, state management, and workflow orchestration
• Deployable: Include complete infrastructure-as-code using AWS CDK or SAM templates

We welcome contributions in the form of fixes to existing examples or new industry-specific use cases. For more information, please see the CONTRIBUTING guide.

This is considered an intermediate learning resource and should be referenced alongside the AWS Durable Functions documentation.

What are Durable Functions?

AWS Durable Functions extend AWS Lambda to support long-running, stateful workflows through automatic checkpointing and replay, while only paying for active compute time. Key capabilities include:

• Long-running executions: Run workflows for up to one year with automatic state recovery
• Checkpointing: Functions save their state at defined points and resume after interruptions
• Cost-efficient waiting: Pause execution without consuming resources during wait periods
• External callbacks: Wait for external events (webhooks, human approval, third-party APIs) without staying active
• Durable promises: Persistent promises that survive system restarts and failures

Examples

Examples are organized by industry vertical to demonstrate domain-specific use cases:

Financial Services (FSI)

Example	Description	Technologies
Fraud Detection	Multi-step transaction processing with risk scoring, human-in-the-loop verification, and conditional workflow branching	Lambda, TypeScript, AWS CDK, SAM

Coming Soon

Additional industry verticals and use cases will be added overtime.

Getting Started

Prerequisites

Review the README found within the folder of each sample. Each sample has its own unique set of requirements.

Quick Start

1. Clone the repository

   git clone <repository-url>
   cd <repository-name>

2. Configure the custom CLI model (enables aws durable-lambda commands)

   aws configure add-model --service-model file://./service.json --service-name durable-lambda

3. Navigate to an example

   cd "Industry/Financial Services (FSI)/FraudDetection"

4. Follow the example's README for deployment instructions

Common Commands

# Deploy a CDK-based example
cdk bootstrap aws://<ACCOUNT_ID>/<REGION>
cdk deploy

# Deploy a SAM-based example
sam build
sam deploy --guided

# Invoke a durable function
aws durable-lambda invoke --function-name <arn> --region <region> ./output

# List executions
aws durable-lambda list-durable-executions-by-function \
  --function-name <name> --status-filter SUCCEEDED --region <region>

Learning Resources

Official Resources

• AWS Durable Functions Documentation - Official AWS documentation
• AWS Lambda Developer Guide - Comprehensive Lambda documentation
• AWS CDK Developer Guide - Infrastructure as code with CDK
• AWS Serverless Application Model (SAM) - Simplified serverless deployment

Example Documentation

Each example includes detailed documentation:

• Architecture diagrams and workflow explanations
• Step-by-step deployment guides
• Testing and invocation instructions
• Best practices and design patterns

License

This library is licensed under the Apache 2.0 License.