Azure Data Factory Azure Function Activity

To run Azure Functions from Azure Data Factory, we can create an Azure Function Activity. We must create a linked service to the Azure Function for this. Linked Services are similar to connection strings. A linked service contains all the information required to connect and authenticate the data factory with the service or data store that needs to be accessed.

While creating a linked service for Azure Function, there are certain properties that need to be set.

• Type : Set to AzureFunction
• function app url : URL for the Azure Function App
• function key: Access key for the Azure Function

Apart from the above, Microsoft provides a table of Azure Function Activity properties that need to be set:

Property	Description	Allowed values	Required
name	Name of the activity in the pipeline	String	yes
type	Type of activity is ‘AzureFunctionActivity’	String	yes
linked service	The Azure Function linked service for the corresponding Azure Function App	Linked service reference	yes
function name	Name of the function in the Azure Function App that this activity calls	String	yes
method	REST API method for the function call	String Supported Types: “GET”, “POST”, “PUT”	yes
header	Headers that are sent to the request. For example, to set the language and type on a request: “headers”: { “Accept-Language”: “en-us”, “Content-Type”: “application/json” }	String (or expression with resultType of string)	No
body	body that is sent along with the request to the function api method	String (or expression with resultType of string) or object.	Required for PUT/POST methods

Table Source: https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/data-factory/control-flow-azure-function-activity

Azure Function activity also supports other features such as routing, queries and durable functions which will be discussed in a future post.