call_activity_with_retry does not work with serializable payloads

[carlvitzthum]

Hello! We at Nasuni are trying to use DurableContext.call_activity_with_retry in an orchestrator that passes JSON-serializable objects as payloads. We are hitting the following exception when switching from call_activity (which works perfectly) to call_activity_with_retry. Our serializable payload class has the required to_json and from_json static methods.

Orchestrator function 'MPUOrchestrator' failed: One or more errors occurred.
Exception: TypeError: Object of type DurablePayload is not JSON serializable

I believe the problem is quite simple: the CallActivityWithRetryAction class does not serialize the input during initialization. The expected serialization is shown here in CallActivityAction.

@davidmrdavid Would you like me to open a PR?

Thanks!

[davidmrdavid]

Ah, silly me, I don't know how I missed that one. You're right, I think you've identified the problem correctly. I can make that fix quickly and deploy it for you at around noon my time :) .

If you beat me to it and are compelled to do so, feel free to make that PR and I'll merge it but there's no need to otherwise.
Expect a patched release today! I'll ping you

⚡ ⚡

[carlvitzthum]

I'm happy to contribute! I will open a PR shortly.

[carlvitzthum]

Sorry for the delay! Made a small PR for the update and added a test. Lmk if you'd like to see any changes.

[davidmrdavid]

This is great! I'll make sure this gets released asap

[davidmrdavid]

Hi @carlvitzthum ! Thank you so much for your contribution again. I just released a version of azure-functions-durable with your patch in it. I also credit your username in the release notes 👍

Release notes: https://github.com/Azure/azure-functions-durable-python/releases/tag/v1.0.0b11
PyPi: https://pypi.org/project/azure-functions-durable/1.0.0b11/

I'll close this issue in the meantime, and please reach out again if anything comes up!

[carlvitzthum]

Thanks a ton for the quick turnaround! Glad I got to contribute :)