Quick Tip: How to Test Timer-Based Azure Functions Locally

I’ve been digging into Azure Functions lately and it’s pretty great. I hit a small stumbling block so figured I’d document it here in case anyone else had the same question.

Challenge

I have an Azure function that is triggered by a timer.

I’d like to test the function locally, but it appears that it only works on the schedule that I set. In the console window that pops up when debugging, I see

The next 5 occurrences of the schedule will be: 9/14/2018 4:00:00 PM 9/21/2018 4:00:00 PM 9/28/2018 4:00:00 PM 10/5/2018 4:00:00 PM 10/12/2018 4:00:00 PM

How can I force this function to run so I can test it locally, without waiting for the next scheduled run?

Solution

You can make a POST request to /admin/functions/[functionName] endpoint to execute the function.

For example, if azure functions is running on localhost:7071 and I have a function called MyFunction, I could send an http POST request to:

http://localhost:7071/admin/functions/MyFunction

and the function would then be executed.

Update 6/23/2020: Thanks to Bill and Scott in the comments below, who correctly point out that you need to specify an empty data payload ({}) and a content type of application/json. If running using curl, it’d be curl -i -X POST -H "Content-Type:application/json" -d "{}" http://localhost:7071/admin/functions/[FunctionName]. I was drafting this quickly and used an app that helpfully abstracted those things away, but it doesn’t help when explaining. Thanks to you both!

Hope this can help save some time for someone else. Happy coding!