Can you nest steps in a function?

[ShravanSunder]

Is nested steps possible and are they memoized?

Would the below cause any issues or does the framework work with the below?

export default inngest.createFunction(
  { id: "activation-email" },
  { event: "app/user.created" },
  async ({ event, step }) => {
    await step.run("send-welcome-email", async () => {
       await step.run("do something", async () => { do something });
       await step.run("do something else", async () => { do something else });
      return await sendEmail({ email: event.user.email, template: "welcome" });
    });

...

related to: https://github.com/orgs/inngest/discussions/586#discussioncomment-7424313

[jpwilliams]

We currently don't support nesting steps, @ShravanSunder.

You can still group sets of steps together using a regular async function:

export default inngest.createFunction(
  { id: "activation-email" },
  { event: "app/user.created" },
  async ({ event, step }) => {
    const sendWelcomeEmail = async () => {
      await step.run("do something", async () => { /* do something */ });
      await step.run("do something else", async () => { /* do something else */ });

      return await step.run("send-welcome-email", async () =>
        sendEmail({ email: event.user.email, template: "welcome" }),
      );
    };

    await sendWelcomeEmail();
  },
);

What would be your use case for nesting steps? 🙂

[ShravanSunder]

i'm using xstate as a statemachine for my workflows. They run in inngest and i was trying to create an internal library that make them work well together. Having nested steps would make some parts of the statemachine / dag much much easier to implement. But its not a blocker. :)

[tonyhb]

@ShravanSunder Would it be possible to represent sub-steps as a unique function then use the new Invoke API (SDK: inngest/inngest-js#368, API: #782) to run the function?

[ShravanSunder]

@tonyhb i'm unable to access the docs PR, so I'll have to experiment with invoke to be sure. It looks promising!

[ShravanSunder]

@jpwilliams @tonyhb
I have a question arising form my experiments. What variables does step.invoke and step.run memoize based on?
Does it use

• just step name ?
• or step name and step parameters?
  • in run its the function?
  • and in invoke that would be function and data passed into function right?