Temporal Has a Free API — Durable Workflows for Any Language

#temporal #workflow #api #backend

Temporal is an open-source workflow orchestration platform. It makes your code fault-tolerant by default — retries, timeouts, and state management are built in.

What Is Temporal?

Temporal runs your business logic as durable workflows. If your process crashes, Temporal replays it from the exact point of failure. No more lost state.

Features:

Durable execution (survives failures)
Built-in retries and timeouts
SDKs for Go, Java, Python, TypeScript, .NET
Temporal Cloud free tier available
Visual workflow UI

Quick Start

# Install Temporal CLI
curl -sSf https://temporal.download/cli.sh | sh

# Start dev server
temporal server start-dev

UI: http://localhost:8233

Python SDK

from temporalio import workflow, activity
from datetime import timedelta

@activity.defn
async def send_email(to: str, subject: str) -> str:
    # Even if this fails, Temporal retries automatically
    return f"Email sent to {to}"

@workflow.defn
class OnboardingWorkflow:
    @workflow.run
    async def run(self, email: str):
        # Step 1: Send welcome email
        await workflow.execute_activity(
            send_email, args=[email, "Welcome!"],
            start_to_close_timeout=timedelta(seconds=30)
        )
        # Step 2: Wait 3 days, then send follow-up
        await workflow.sleep(timedelta(days=3))
        await workflow.execute_activity(
            send_email, args=[email, "How is it going?"],
            start_to_close_timeout=timedelta(seconds=30)
        )

HTTP API

# Start workflow
curl -X POST http://localhost:7233/api/v1/namespaces/default/workflows \
  -H "Content-Type: application/json" \
  -d '{"workflow_id":"onboard-1","workflow_type":{"name":"OnboardingWorkflow"},"input":{"payloads":[{"data":"dXNlckBleGFtcGxlLmNvbQ=="}]}}'