eShopOnContainers + Temporal.io Workflows

[fnandop]

Project link

https://github.com/fnandop/eshop-temporal-io

Language

.NET

Short description (max 256 chars)

Experiment reimplementing the reference project eShopOnContainers order saga with Temporal.io workflows and activities, showing Temporal users how centralized orchestration compares to event choreography in a , end-to-end order pipeline.

Long Description

This repo is an experiment in reimplementing the classic eShopOnContainers order saga using Temporal.io workflows and activities on top of the modern .NET Aspire–based eShop.

Instead of integration events choreographing the saga, a single Temporal workflow now orchestrates the whole order lifecycle: creating the order, waiting out the grace period, checking stock (Catalog), charging the customer (Payment), and handling success/failure paths with compensation. All external calls are activities, so it’s a concrete example of wrapping existing microservices with Temporal without rewriting them.

It’s useful to Temporal users who want to:

• Compare event choreography vs centralized orchestration on a realistic e-commerce flow.
• See Temporal .NET SDK usage (workflows, activities, timers, signals) in a full end-to-end sample.
• Run everything easily via a .NET Aspire host that also spins up a Temporal dev server.

The README includes screenshots of the eShop UI and Temporal Web UI (happy path, no stock, no money) so you can visually inspect workflow histories and failure scenarios.

Author(s)

Fernando Pinto

[fnandop]

Added a How to Run and Test section, as suggested by ZiggyBot

[fnandop]

@evaluate

[fnandop]

@evaluate

[fnandop]

@evaluate

[github-actions]

Hi, I'm ZiggyBot! 🤖 Here's my pre-evaluation of this submission:

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Criterion	Assessment
Useful to Temporal users	✅ Yes — Provides a concrete, realistic comparison of event choreography vs. Temporal orchestration using a well-known .NET reference architecture, which is valuable for developers evaluating Temporal for saga patterns.
Benefits clearly explained	✅ Yes — The README clearly articulates the motivation (inspired by Temporal's keynote on event-driven architectures), includes detailed diagrams comparing both approaches, and explains exactly what Temporal features are demonstrated.
OSI Approved License	✅ Yes — MIT License is OSI-approved and clearly identified in the repository.
README with working instructions	✅ Yes — The Quick Start section provides clear prerequisites (.NET 10, Aspire workload, Docker), step-by-step commands to run locally, and instructions for triggering and inspecting the workflow.

Overall: Looks good ✅

Notes:

• This is a thoughtful educational project that takes a canonical .NET microservices reference app and demonstrates a meaningful architectural transformation. The side-by-side comparison with diagrams for happy path and failure scenarios (no stock, payment failure) is excellent for learning.
• The use of .NET Aspire to host both the application and the Temporal dev server is a nice touch that lowers the barrier to running the sample.
• Being a fork of the official eShop repo is appropriate here since the goal is to show the transformation, not to create something entirely new.
• The project is honest about its limitations (simulated payment callback, no auth, educational-only), which is appreciated.

Suggested questions for submitter:

• Would you consider adding a brief section comparing the complexity/lines of code between the choreographed and orchestrated approaches?
• Have you thought about demonstrating compensation logic (e.g., releasing reserved stock on payment failure) as a future enhancement?

Teaching moment:

This project demonstrates a clean pattern for wrapping existing microservice calls as Temporal Activities. The EShopActivities class shows how each step of the saga (creating orders, checking stock, initiating payment) becomes a discrete, retryable activity. What's particularly instructive is the use of Signals to handle the asynchronous payment callback — the PaymentWorkflowMockDelay workflow simulates an external payment processor and signals the main workflow when payment completes. This is a realistic pattern for integrating with external systems that don't return results synchronously, and it's a great example of how Temporal's signal mechanism bridges the gap between synchronous orchestration and asynchronous external events.
View in source ↗

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[Shy]

Hey @fnandop, sorry on our delay reviewing this issue. Wanted to check if it was still good for us to add this project to code exchange. We'll get it up when we hear back from you.

[fnandop]

Hey @Shy. Yes, absolutely. Please feel free to add the project to Code Exchange. Thanks!