What are Azure Functions?

Azure Functions

Serverless compute service that lets you run event-triggered code without having to explicitly provision or manage infrastructure. Azure Functions bills based on time and data transfer.

• Azure Durable Functions is a library that brings workflow orchestration abstractions to code. It comes with several patterns to combine multiple serverless functions into stateful long-running flows. The library handles communication and state management, while keeping the API surface simple.
• You can use the hugely-popular Visual Studio to develop, test, and deploy C# class library functions to Azure. Edit, build, and run functions on your local development computer, and publish your Azure Functions project directly to Azure, and create Azure resources as needed.

(Azure calls these Publishers) Azure services: Cosmos DB, Azure Blob Storage, Azure Cognitive Service, and Azure Bot Service have native integrations with Azure functions, For other Azure Services, such as Azure Stream Analytics, you configure Functions as one of the output sinks to the Stream, or use Event Grid to trigger functions.

Azure Functions comes with HTTP endpoint integration, and there is no additional cost for this integration.

Azure Functions uses triggers and bindings. A trigger is an event that the function listens to. The function may have any number of input and output bindings to pull and/or push extra data at the time of processing.

The implementation details differ per language runtime. The binding system provides extra flexibility, but it also brings some complexity, in terms of both API and configuration.

Event Grid

Event Grid sends HTTP requests to notify you about events that happen in publishers. Event handlers receive and process events. Azure Functions has built-in support for handling Event Grid events

Azure Functions Runtimes

Azure Functions supports Node.js, Java, Python, C#, F#, and PowerShell.

You can create Azure Functions using Visual Studio Code, Visual Studio, Command Line, or Maven. A function contains two key pieces – your code, and the function.json file. The function.json file defines the function’s trigger, bindings, and other configuration settings.

Azure Functions offers three ways to deploy/host functions: There are three hosting plans available for Azure Functions: Consumption plan, Premium plan, and Dedicated (App Service) plan.