Azure Serverless Computing Cookbook

Azure Serverless Computing Cookbook

Solve problems at scale by leveraging Azure Functions

Praveen Kumar Sreeram

BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI

Azure Serverless Computing Cookbook

Copyright © 2017 Packt Publishing

All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews.

Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book.

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First published: August 2017

Production reference: 1160817

Published by Packt Publishing Ltd.

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ISBN 978-1-78839-082-8

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Credits

Foreword

It is my pleasure to write the foreword for Azure Serverless Computing Cookbook by Praveen Kumar Sreeram. Azure Functions is one of the key Platform as a service (PaaS) components from Microsoft and provides a rich experience for the event-driven, compute-on-demand programming model. To use Azure Functions, the user is not required to be a master of any specific programming language; rather, they can use their language of choice, such as C#, Node.js, JavaScript, PowerShell, and so on, to create highly scalable functions.

Azure Serverless Computing Cookbook shows the author's dedication and hard work to come out with a gem that will not only benefit developers and architects, but also enterprises that want to leverage serverless solutions in Azure. The author has thoroughly gone through each parameter and every consideration in tackling the concept of Azure Functions. You will surely like the way numerous code samples and use cases blend together to create a knowledge repository for you to start with cloud development on the go.

I would like to thank Packt, Mohd. Riyan Khan, and Shrilekha Inani for involving me in evaluating the content and giving me the opportunity to write this foreword.

Abhishek Kumar

Microsoft Azure MVP and Consultant – Datacom New Zealand

About the Author

Praveen Kumar Sreeram works as a Solution Architect at PennyWise Solutions (an Ogilvy and Mather Company). He has over 12 years of experience in the field of development, analysis, design, and delivery of applications of various technologies, including custom web development using ASP.NET and MVC to building mobile apps using the cross-platform technology Xamarin for domains such as insurance, telecom, and wireless expense management. He has been awarded two times as the Most Valuable Professional by one of the most leading social community websites, CSharpCorner, for his contributions toward writing articles and helping community members, mostly on Microsoft Azure. He is highly focused on learning about technology. He is an avid blogger who writes about his learning at his personal blog, called PraveenKumarSreeram and you can also follow him on twitter at @PrawinSreeram. His current focus is on analyzing business problems and providing technical solutions for various projects related to Microsoft Azure and Sitecore.

First of all, my thanks go to the great editorial team at Packt Publishing for identifying my potential and giving me the opportunity to write this book, especially Shrilekha Inani, Sweeny Dias, Komal Karne, Yogesh Mishra, and the whole team who encouraged me a lot. Without them, I couldn’t have done it.

I would like to thank my current employer, PennyWise Solutions, all of my management team, especially the CTOs, Mr. Pavan Pochu and Mr. Arup Dutta, for guiding me all the way, and my lovely colleagues who encouraged me a lot.

I would like to thank my grandma Neelavatamma; dad, Kamalakar; mom, Seetha; my better half, Haritha; and my little princess, Rithwika; for being in my life and giving me courage all the time.

I would like to express my deepest gratitude to Medeme Narasimhulu and Medeme Saraswathi (my uncle and aunt) who have been supporting me and encouraging me right from my college days. Without them, I wouldn't have even become a software professional.

About the Reviewer

Florian Klaffenbach started  his IT career in 2004 as a 1st and 2nd level IT support technician and IT salesman trainee for a B2B online shop. After that, he changed to a small company working as IT project manager for planning, implementing, and integrating from industrial plants and laundries into enterprise IT. After a few years, he changed course to Dell Germany. There, he started from scratch as an enterprise technical support analyst and later worked on a project to start Dell technical communities and support over social media in Europe and outside of the US. Currently, he works as a Technology Solutions Professional for Microsoft, specializing in hybrid Microsoft cloud infrastructured.

Additionally, he is active as a Microsoft blogger and lecturer. He blogs on his own page, Datacenter-Flo.de, and the Brocade Germany community. Together with a very good friend, he founded Windows Server User Group Berlin to create a network of Microsoft IT Pros in Berlin. Florian maintains a very tight network with many vendors such as Cisco, Dell, and Microsoft and several communities. This helps him grow his experience and get the best out of a solution for his customers. Since 2016, he has also been the Co-Chairman of the Azure community Germany. In April 2016, Microsoft awarded Florian the Microsoft Most Valuable Professional for Cloud and Datacenter Management. In 2017, after joining Microsoft, Florian became an MVP reconnect member.

Florian has worked for several companies and Microsoft partners such as Dell Germany, CGI Germany, and msg services ag. Now he has joined Microsoft Germany in a technical presales role and supports customers in getting started with hybrid cloud infrastructures and topics.

He has also worked on the following books:

Taking Control with System Center App Controller

Microsoft Azure Storage Essentials

Mastering Cloud Development using Microsoft Azure

Mastering Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2013

Implementing Azure Design Patterns

Windows Server 2016 Cookbook

Mastering Active Directory

Exchange PowerShell Cookbook

Implementing Azure Solutions

Acknowledgments

I want to thank Packt Publishing for giving me the chance to review the book as well as my employer and my family for being accommodating of the time investment I have made in this project. There is a special thanks I need to make to Virginia Dias from Packt. It is always awesome to be a reviewer on her projects, and it’s a great pleasure to work with her.

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Table of Contents

Preface

What this book covers

What you need for this book

Who this book is for

Sections

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Conventions

Reader feedback

Customer support

Downloading the example code

Downloading the color images of this book

Errata

Piracy

Questions

Accelerate Your Cloud Application Development Using Azure Function Triggers and Bindings

Introduction

Building a backend Web API using HTTP triggers

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

See also

Persisting employee details using Azure Storage table output bindings

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Understanding more about Storage Connection

What is Azure Table storage service?

Partition key and row key

There's more...

Saving the profile images to Queues using Queue output bindings

Getting ready

How to do it…

How it works…

There's more…

See also

Storing the image in Azure Blob storage

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also...

Cropping an image using ImageResizer trigger

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Working with Notifications Using SendGrid and Twilio Services

Introduction

Sending an email notification to the administrator of the website using the SendGrid service

Getting ready

Creating a SendGrid account

Generating the SendGrid API key

Configuring the SendGrid API key with the Azure Function app

How to do it...

How it works...

See also

Sending an email notification to the end user dynamically

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Implementing email logging in the Blob storage

How to do it...

How it works...

Modifying the email content to include an attachment

Getting ready

How to do it...

Customizing the log file name using IBinder interface

Adding an attachment to the email

There's more...

Sending SMS notification to the end user using the Twilio service

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Seamless Integration of Azure Functions with Other Azure Services

Introduction

Using Cognitive Services to locate faces from the images

Getting ready

Creating a new Computer Vision API account

Configuring App settings

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Azure SQL Database interactions using Azure Functions

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

Processing a file stored in OneDrive using an external file trigger

Getting ready

How to do it...

Monitoring tweets using Logic Apps and notifying when popular users tweet

Getting ready

How to do it...

Create a new Logic App

Designing the Logic App with Twitter and Gmail connectors

Testing the Logic App functionality

How it works...

See also

Integrating Logic Apps with Azure Functions

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

See also

Understanding the Integrated Developer Experience of Visual Studio Tools for Azure Functions

Introduction

Creating the function app using Visual Studio 2017

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Debugging C# Azure Functions on a local staged environment using Visual Studio 2017

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Connecting to the Azure Cloud storage from local Visual Studio environment

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Deploying the Azure Function app to Azure Cloud using Visual Studio

How to do it...

There's more...

See also

Debugging live C# Azure Function hosted on the Microsoft Azure Cloud environment using Visual Studio

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

Exploring Testing Tools for the Validation of Azure Functions

Introduction

Testing Azure Functions

Getting ready

How to do it...

Testing HTTP triggers using Postman

Testing Blob trigger using the Microsoft Storage Explorer

Testing Queue trigger using the Azure Management portal

There's more...

Testing an Azure Function on a staged environment using deployment slots

How to do it...

There's more

Load testing Azure Functions using VSTS

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

See also

Creating and testing Azure Function locally using Azure CLI tools

Getting ready

How to do it...

Testing and validating Azure Function responsiveness using Application Insights

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Monitoring and Troubleshooting Azure Serverless Services

Introduction

Monitoring your Azure Functions

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

Monitoring Azure Functions using Application Insights

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more ...

Pushing custom telemetry details to analytics of Application Insights

Getting ready

How to do it...

Creating AI function

Configuring access keys

Integrating and testing AI query

Configuring the custom derived metric report

How it works...

See also

Sending application telemetry details via email

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Integrating real-time AI monitoring data with Power BI using Azure Functions

Getting ready

How to do it...

Configuring Power BI with dashboard, dataset, and push URI

Creating Azure AI real-time Power BI - C# function

How it works...

There's more...

Code Reusability and Refactoring the Code in Azure Functions

Introduction

Creating a common code repository for better manageability within a function app

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Shared code across Azure Functions using class libraries

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Azure Functions and precompiled assemblies

Getting ready...

How to do it...

Creating a class library using Visual Studio

Creating a new HTTP trigger Azure Function

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Migrating legacy C# application classes to Azure Functions using PowerShell

Getting ready

How to do it...

Creating an application using Visual Studio

Creating a new PowerShell Azure Function

How it works...

See also

Using strongly typed classes in Azure Functions

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Developing Reliable and Durable Serverless Applications Using Durable Functions

Introduction

Configuring Durable Functions in the Azure Management portal

Getting ready

How to do it...

There's more...

See also

Creating a hello world Durable Function app

Getting ready

How to do it...

Creating HttpStart Function - the Orchestrator client

Creating Orchestrator function

Creating Activity function

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Testing and troubleshooting Durable Functions

Getting ready

How to do it...

See also

Implementing multithreaded reliable applications using Durable Functions

Getting ready

How to do it...

Creating Orchestrator function

Creating Activity function GetAllCustomers

Creating Activity function CreateQRCodeImagesPerCustomer

How it works...

There's more...

See also

Implement Best Practices for Azure Functions

Adding multiple messages to a Queue using the IAsyncCollector function

Getting ready

How to do it...

How it works...

There's more...

Implementing defensive applications using Azure Functions and Queue triggers

Getting ready

How to do it...

CreateQueueMessage