Skip to main content

Standalone Activities Feature Guide

View Markdown

Standalone Activities are Activity Executions that run independently, without being orchestrated by a Workflow. Instead of starting an Activity from within a Workflow Definition using workflow.ExecuteActivity(), you start a Standalone Activity directly from a Temporal Client using client.ExecuteActivity().

The Activity definition and Worker registration are identical to regular Activities, and only the execution path differs.

tip

New to Standalone Activities? Start with the Standalone Activities Quickstart.

This page covers the following:

info

This documentation uses source code from the standalone-activity/helloworld.

Get the result of a Standalone Activity​

Use ActivityHandle.Get() to block until the Activity completes and retrieve its result. This is analogous to calling Get() on a WorkflowRun.

var result string
err = handle.Get(context.Background(), &result)
if err != nil {
	log.Fatalln("Activity failed", err)
}
log.Println("Activity result:", result)

If the Activity completed successfully, the result is deserialized into the provided pointer. If the Activity failed, the failure is returned as an error.

Or use the Temporal CLI to wait for a result by Activity ID:

temporal activity result --activity-id standalone_activity_helloworld_ActivityID

Get a handle to an existing Standalone Activity​

Use client.GetActivityHandle() to create a handle to a previously started Standalone Activity. This is analogous to client.GetWorkflow() for Workflow Executions.

Both ActivityID and RunID are required.

handle := c.GetActivityHandle(client.GetActivityHandleOptions{
	ActivityID: "standalone_activity_helloworld_ActivityID",
	RunID:      "the-run-id",
})

// Use the handle to get the result, describe, cancel, or terminate
var result string
err := handle.Get(context.Background(), &result)
if err != nil {
	log.Fatalln("Unable to get activity result", err)
}

List Standalone Activities​

Use client.ListActivities() to list Standalone Activity Executions that match a List Filter query. The result contains an iterator that yields ActivityExecutionInfo entries.

These APIs return only Standalone Activity Executions. Activities running inside Workflows are not included.

resp, err := c.ListActivities(context.Background(), client.ListActivitiesOptions{
	Query: "TaskQueue = 'standalone-activity-helloworld'",
})
if err != nil {
	log.Fatalln("Unable to list activities", err)
}

for info, err := range resp.Results {
	if err != nil {
		log.Fatalln("Error iterating activities", err)
	}
	log.Printf("ActivityID: %s, Type: %s, Status: %v\n",
		info.ActivityID, info.ActivityType, info.Status)
}

Or use the Temporal CLI:

temporal activity list

The Query field accepts the same List Filter syntax used for Workflow Visibility. For example, "ActivityType = 'Activity' AND Status = 'Running'".

Count Standalone Activities​

Use client.CountActivities() to count Standalone Activity Executions that match a List Filter query. This returns the total count of executions (running, completed, failed, etc.) - not the number of queued tasks. It works the same way as counting Workflow Executions.

resp, err := c.CountActivities(context.Background(), client.CountActivitiesOptions{
	Query: "TaskQueue = 'standalone-activity-helloworld'",
})
if err != nil {
	log.Fatalln("Unable to count activities", err)
}

log.Println("Total activities:", resp.Count)

Or use the Temporal CLI:

temporal activity count

Run Standalone Activities with Temporal Cloud​

The Worker and Client code in the Standalone Activities Quickstart use envconfig.MustLoadDefaultClientOptions(), so the same code works against Temporal Cloud - configure the connection via environment variables or a TOML profile. No code changes are needed.

For a step-by-step guide on connecting to Temporal Cloud, including Namespace creation, certificate generation, and authentication setup in the Cloud UI, see Connect to Temporal Cloud.

Connect with mTLS​

Set these environment variables with values from your Temporal Cloud Namespace settings:

export TEMPORAL_ADDRESS=<your-namespace>.<your-account-id>.tmprl.cloud:7233
export TEMPORAL_NAMESPACE=<your-namespace>.<your-account-id>
export TEMPORAL_TLS_CLIENT_CERT_PATH='path/to/your/client.pem'
export TEMPORAL_TLS_CLIENT_KEY_PATH='path/to/your/client.key'

Connect with an API key​

Set these environment variables with values from your Temporal Cloud API key settings:

export TEMPORAL_ADDRESS=<your-namespace>.<your-account-id>.tmprl.cloud:7233
export TEMPORAL_NAMESPACE=<your-namespace>.<your-account-id>
export TEMPORAL_API_KEY=<your-api-key>

Then run the Worker and starter code as shown in the Standalone Activities Quickstart.