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External Storage Integration: Lazy resolving references, general refactoring - #3016

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External Storage Integration: Lazy resolving references, general refactoring#3016
cconstable wants to merge 2 commits into
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@cconstable cconstable commented Aug 18, 2026

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What was changed

  • Renames ExternalStorageMessageTransformer to ExternalStorage.
  • Adds a DataConverter decorator, ExternalStorageResolvingDataConverter, that does the external storage work and delegates to the existing data converter for everything else.
    • This means we defer extstore operations until values are actually needed (e.g. fromPayload). We don't eagerly load them.
    • This was implemented as a decorator because the existing data converter is used in the workflow sandbox (and extstore shouldn't be in there).

Why?

These changes support the following PRs:

  1. Workflow worker integration External Storage Integration: WorkflowWorker, replay, history #3017
  2. Nexus worker integration External Storage Integration: NexusWorker #3018
  3. Activity worker and client integration External Storage Integration: Activity worker, client #3020
  4. E2E extstore tests

Checklist

  • Added tests

@cconstable
cconstable force-pushed the extstore/foundation branch from 3fe47fb to 831c284 Compare August 18, 2026 21:03
private boolean allowActivityHeartbeatDuringShutdown;
private String workerControlTaskQueue;
private PreferredVersionProvider preferredVersionProvider;
private @Nullable ExternalStorage externalStorage;

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This doesn't have any callers in this PR but three of the PRs that build off this will use it. Included it here since those PRs are being up together.

@cconstable
cconstable force-pushed the extstore/foundation branch from 831c284 to 460bfbf Compare August 19, 2026 17:40
@cconstable cconstable changed the title refactor(extstore): general extstore refactoring. rename MessageTransformer to ExternalStorage, create a lazy extstore resolving data converter. External Storage refactoring for workflow, activity, client, and nexus integration Aug 19, 2026
@cconstable cconstable changed the title External Storage refactoring for workflow, activity, client, and nexus integration External Storage Integration: general refactoring Aug 19, 2026
@cconstable cconstable changed the title External Storage Integration: general refactoring External Storage Integration: Lazy resolving references, general refactoring Aug 19, 2026
@cconstable
cconstable marked this pull request as ready for review August 19, 2026 18:57
@cconstable
cconstable requested a review from a team as a code owner August 19, 2026 18:57
}

if (ExternalStorageReferences.isReference(payload)) {
throw new ExternalStorageNotConfiguredException();

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IIUC, this looks to be a DataConverter, which means it runs within the workflow code context. This means that this exception is handleable by user code. I think we need to move this to somewhere before the workflow code executes so we can fail the workflow task without allowing the user code to compensate.

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The context here is that if we missed integrating external storage into some piece of the SDK or a new feature was added that forgot to integrate external storage, this would catch it and throw a not configured error. It's purely a defensive fallback to make sure that SDK bugs don't appear as "your payloads can't be decoded/transformed" errors.

I do think ExternalStorageNotConfiguredException is probably the wrong error to be throwing here because it's likely that it was configured right and the sdk just isn't using external storage. Should this be a "some feature you are using has not integrated external storage. please file a bug report" type thing?

/**
* A {@link DataConverter} that resolves external storage reference payloads before deserialization.
*/
public final class ExternalStorageResolvingDataConverter implements DataConverter {

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Removed this entirely in favor of just doing the lazy retrieving in the few spots we needed explicitly. After chatting this felt like too much abstraction.

@@ -84,10 +98,21 @@ public Builder setPayloadSizeThreshold(int payloadSizeThreshold) {
return this;
}

/**
* Maximum number of payload lists visited concurrently while offloading or restoring the
* payloads of a single message. Must be at least 1. Defaults to 3.

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Not sure a user is going to understand what is meant by "a single message". And "a single message" isn't quite the right scope from a implementation perspective. Maybe should describe this in terms of client operations and worker tasks.

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I think this will get cleaned up in the concurrency pass. I believe (technically) a single message is correct but I agree it's not a helpful way to describe it.

}
}

<T extends Message> CompletableFuture<T> store(

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Are there legitimate places where we need to visit on the fully constructed message instead of the build (the next overload)? I presume that the caller already created a builder, constructed the message, then this would effective recreate another builder, and reconstruct the message again. Might be perf issues. I would check to see if we can drop the message overloads and only use the builder overloads to force callers into the better performing algorithm.

}
}

<T extends Message> CompletableFuture<T> store(

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This will not work for workflow task completions because the nested commands need to change the the context when they are encountered. Having an outer visitor doing that determination and then calling this method is probably okay.

/**
* A {@link DataConverter} that resolves external storage reference payloads before deserialization.
*/
public final class ExternalStorageResolvingDataConverter implements DataConverter {

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Maybe add a comment that this is used in non-workflow contexts.

…former to ExternalStorage, create a lazy extstore resolving data converter.
@cconstable
cconstable force-pushed the extstore/foundation branch from 460bfbf to b3804da Compare August 21, 2026 20:35
@cconstable

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Pushed a few updates:

  • I realized the names were a little off between this SDK and the Python/TS ones so I renamed ExternalStorageOptions to ExternalStorage and the previous ExternalStorage to ExternalStorageRunner (this feels a bit TS-flavored)
  • I moved ExternalStorage config on to the DataConverter and added a default null value for it. Matches the other SDKs.
  • Moved the ExternalStorageGenericWorkflowClient to the activity/client PR https://github.com/temporalio/sdk-java/pull/3020/changes. It's still awkward that some things in there eagerly fetch payloads and others just pass through but I'm not sure of a good path forward there.
  • I removed the lazy data converter decorator in favor of just doing the lazy external storage retrieving for describe and listWorkflowExecutions inline. Seemed like the decorator was more abstraction than necessary.

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