Delayed Functions

You can easily enqueue jobs in the future with Inngest. Inngest offers two ways to run jobs in the future: delaying jobs for a specific amount of time (up to a year, and for free plan up to seven days), or running code at a specific date and time. There are some benefits to enqueuing jobs using Inngest:

• It works across any provider or platform
• Delaying jobs is durable, and works across server restarts, serverless functions, and redeploys
• You can enqueue jobs into the far future
• Serverless functions are fully supported on all platforms
• Our SDK bypasses serverless function timeouts on all platforms
• You never need to manage queues or backlogs

Platform support

This works across all providers and platforms, whether you run serverless functions or use servers like express. It also bypasses serverless function timeouts on all platforms, so you can sleep for a longer time than your provider supports.

Delaying jobs

You can delay jobs using the step.sleep() method:

import { Inngest } from "inngest";

const inngest = new Inngest({ id: "signup-flow" });

export const fn = inngest.createFunction(
  { id: "send-signup-email" },
  { event: "app/user.created" },
  async ({ event, step }) => {
    await step.sleep("wait-a-moment", "1 hour");
    await step.run("do-some-work-in-the-future", async () => {
      // This runs after 1 hour
    });
  }
);

For more information on step.sleep() read the reference.

Running at specific times

You can run jobs at a specific time using the step.sleepUntil() method:

import { Inngest } from "inngest";

const inngest = new Inngest({ id: "signup-flow" });

export const fn = inngest.createFunction(
  { id: "send-signup-email" },
  { event: "app/user.created" },
  async ({ event, step }) => {
    await step.sleepUntil("wait-for-iso-string", "2023-04-01T12:30:00");

    // You can also sleep until a timestamp within the event data.  This lets you
    // pass in a time for you to run the job:
    await step.sleepUntil("wait-for-timestamp", event.data.run_at); // Assuming event.data.run_at is a timestamp.

    await step.run("do-some-work-in-the-future", async () => {
      // This runs at the specified time.
    });
  }
);

For more information on step.sleepUntil() read the reference.

How it works

In both methods, the function controls when it runs. You control the flow of your code by calling sleep or sleepUntil within your function directly, instead of using the queue to manage your code's timing. This keeps your logic together and makes your code easier to modify.

Inngest stops the function from running for whatever time is specified. When you call step.sleep or step.sleepUntil the function automatically stops running any future work. The function then tells the Inngest executor that it should be re-invoked at a future time. We re-call the function at the next step, skipping any previous work. This is how we bypass serverless function time limits and work across server restarts or redeploys.