Two small questions:
1. in your README you give this example for durable execution:
const shipment = await ctx.awaitEvent(`shipment.packed:${params.orderId}`);
I was just wondering, how does it work? I was more expecting a generator with a `yield` statement to run "long-running tasks" in the background... otherwise is the node runtime keeping the thread running with the await? doesn't this "pile up"?
2. would your framework be suited to long-running jobs with multiple steps? I have sometimes big jobs running in the background on all of my IoT devices, eg:
for each d in devices: doSomeWork(d)
and I'd like to run the big outerloop each hour (say), but only if the previous one is complete (eg max num of workers per task = 1), and that the inner-loop be some "steps" that can be cached, but can be retried if they fail
would your framework be suited for that? or is that just a simpler use-case for pgmq and I don't need the Absurd framework?
That's mostly just because I found that to be the easiest way to use any existing AI API to work. There are things like vercel's AI SDK which internally runs the agentic loop in generateText, but then there is no way to checkpoint that.
> I was just wondering, how does it work? I was more expecting a generator with a `yield` statement to run "long-running tasks" in the background... otherwise is the node runtime keeping the thread running with the await? doesn't this "pile up"?
When you `awaitEvent` or `sleepUntil`/`sleepFor` it sets a wake point or sets a re-schedule on the database. Then it raises `SuspendTask` and ends the execution of the task temporarily until it's rescheduled.
As for your IOT case: yes, you should be able to do that.
oulipo2•5h ago
the_mitsuhiko•5h ago