Episode 543

Alex Mang on Azure Durable Functions

Alex Mang describes Azure Durable Functions and some real-world examples of how he uses them.

Articles

When and Why Chatbots

Creating and testing a Bot With the Microsoft Bot Framework

Microsoft Bot Framework Template Explained

Microsoft Bot Framework: Adding A New Dialog

Saving State Data with the Microsoft Bot Framework

Saving Microsoft Bot State to Azure Storage

Calling a Microsoft Chatbot from a web page

Videos

GCast 26: Creating a Chatbot in the Azure Portal

GCast 27: QnAMaker

Sample Code

Bot-Framework-Demos

GCast 27:

QnAMaker

Learn how to use QnA Maker to create a bot that automatically answers questions.

The world of The Way of Kings by Brandon Sanderson is a dangerous one. The continent of Roshar on the planet Roshar is filled with perils. Violent "highstorms" destroy nearly everything in their path; giant carnivorous crustaceans roam the chasms; the Parshendi and the Alethi races have been at war for as long as anyone can remember with no victory in sight for either side; and godlike creatures battle each other every few thousand years to decide the fate of the planet.

The Alethi-Parshendi wars take place on the Shattered Planes - a vast series of high plateaus separated by deep chasms. Enslaved "bridgemen" push giant bridges between the plateaus in order for armies to advance and attack. These bridgemen also serve the purpose of drawing enemy fire away from the armies, keeping their survival rate close to zero.

On top of this is the caste system, which decrees at birth the fate of each person - from slave to king. There exist about a dozen specific castes, but they are grouped into two broad categories, based on eye color. The light-eyes are clearly at the top and dark-eyes are decidedly below.

But Roshar also has some marvels. The storms generate a mystical force called "stormlight" that can be captured in stones and other objects and can be harnessed by those with the power to do so. Powerful shardblades can cut through nearly anything and armor made of shardplate can protect the wearer from nearly any attack; soulcasters are devices that allow masters to transmute one object or substance into another; and spren - creatures made of light, who sometimes come to the aid of humans.

The book switches points of view between several characters. The most important are:

Kaladin, son of a physician, who goes to war to protect his younger brother. But ends up sold into slavery as a bridgeman - the most expendable people in the army. He begins to acquire powers from stormlight and learn how to use those powers to help his fellow bridgemen.

Shallan Davar, who apprentices herself to the heretic scholar Jasnah Kholin in an attempt to steal her soulcaster.

Dalinar Kholin, a decorated warrior, an honorable man, and the uncle of a king. Dalinar sees visions of ancient gods and begins to question the wisdom of the endless war waged by his countrymen.

By far, the most interesting story is Kaladin's. He progresses from idealist to cynic to reluctant super hero and it is all done with perfect plausibility. Kaladin miraculously survives every danger he faces, but often those closest to him perishes. Despite this, the other bridgemen rally around him and he eventually inspires and unites these dregs of society.

Few of the stories overlap in this book, but we expect them to do so as the series progresses.

As he has done before, Brandon Sanderson does a masterful job of building a world in which to place his characters and stories. In fact, the first two-thirds of this book spends much of its time setting the scene for the final third.

At over 1000 pages, this is an intimidating book - particularly when you consider it is part 1 of a proposed 10-volume series (three volumes have been published as of this writing) It took me nearly a year to finish it as other patrons kept requesting it

But it was worth the time and effort. I loved the characters and the world and the plausibility of the world Sanderson creates. Sanderson doesn't simply allow magic to exist - he provides a source to that magic and a partial explanation of its uses and limits.

The Way of Kings not a perfect book. The story is long and the action is sometimes separated by hundreds of pages of character development. But it never suffers from the flowery language that often bogs down high fantasy stories

There is much to think about in this book. But one of Kaladin's men put it best when Kaladin asked the meaning of a story:

"It means what you want it to mean," Hoid said. "The purpose of a storyteller is not to tell you how to think , but to give you questions to think upon. Too often, we forget that.”

Episode 542

Jim Wooley on Static Analyzers and Roslyn

Microsoft MVP Jim Wooley describes how to use Roslyn to create your own static analyzers to verify the quality of your code.

Appointment in Samarra by John O'Hara takes place over a 72-hour period in the small eastern Pennsylvania town of Gibbsville.

But three days is all it takes for Julian English to destroy everything good in his life.

Julian had it made. He was born into a wealthy family; he owned a car dealer that was successful even during the great depression; and he had a beautiful, faithful wife, who loved him.

But he drank. And one night, at a party, he grew tired of listening to loudmouth boor Harry Reilly and threw a drink in his face.  Julian quickly regretted his actions. Harry was an influential man in Gibbsville and Julian owed him money; but rather than correct the situation, Julian hurtles down a path of self-destruction for the next 3 days, alienating himself from the rest of society, burning bridges in his life, and spiraling quickly downward until he reaches a breaking point.

Appointment is an excellent look at America of the 1930s. It shows us the social castes, the gossip, the overt racism, and life inside a bubble that is small town America.

O'Hara does a masterful job of building the characters of this town and the dynamics between them.  He gives us a backstory about Julian's wife, so we understand why he is lucky to have her and a fool to risk losing her. We learn about Julian's family and the pressure his father places on him, so we understand why he sometimes feels useless and helpless.

Interestingly, none of Julian's acts of self-destruction are described in the book. We hear about them later as characters discuss what happened. Sometimes, it's unclear exactly what Julian did. For example, his wife sees him leave a night club with the girlfriend of a local mobster; then later finds Julian passed out drunk in his car. Did he commit adultery? It probably doesn't matter, as that was clearly his intent. And he is now in trouble with both his wife and the mob.

This is a book that got better as it went along. As the story progresses, Julian's downfall seems inevitable. But I could not look away. Appointment in Samarra is an American tragedy that is well worth watching.

GCast 26:

Creating a Chatbot in the Azure Portal

In this video, I show how to create, deploy, and edit a chatbot completely within your web browser using the Azure Portal. You can event download the source code and edit it in Visual Studio, if you wish.

Sharon Spry was one of the finest people I've known.

She had a gift for understanding and relating and empathizing with others. She had a bright mind and a wonderful smile. She had a sense of humor that allowed her to laugh at the world and to laugh at herself and sometimes to laugh at her troubles.

She was someone I called when I was feeling down. She never failed to cheer me up.

She was someone I called to share good news. It always made me feel better.

She was always interested in what I was doing and always asking about my immediate family.

I was at her wedding where my 5-year-old son Timmy (now a grown man known as "Tim") served as a ring bearer.

Whenever I visited San Francisco, I made a point to visit her family. I stayed at their house many times.

She came to visit me on multiple occasions and we got together at places away from our homes.

A few years ago, she was diagnosed with cancer and was in and out of chemotherapy and other treatments. I’ve forgotten where the cancer started; but, by the end of this year, it had spread throughout her entire body.

I will always admire the courage with which she faced this disease. She was always open and honest about her chances and what she was going through. She didn’t ask for pity, but she didn’t hide anything or downplay the seriousness from the rest of us.

Sharon passed away last night at the age of 55. The cancer she battled the last few years finally overcame her.

She leaves behind a husband and two young children.

She was my cousin and my friend.

And I miss her.

When I was a boy, my grandmother wrote down the names of my male ancestors. This began with my father, who was preceded by my grandfather (her husband), my great grandfather (her father-in-law) and so on. Years later, I wondered why she did not provide similar for her own ancestors, but this question did not occur to me at that time.

She told the story of two brothers who married two sisters, then emigrated from France to Quebec. They settled in a small town called "St. Ours". One of the brothers was Francois Giard. Francois had a son named R.F. Giard, who had a son named Francois, who had a son named Philip, who had a son named Normand, who had a son named David, who is writing this story now.

Since hearing about St. Ours, it has always been a dream of mine to visit there. I was in Montreal for work a few weeks ago and a map of the area revealed that I was only an hour from St. Ours.

So on the final day of the workshop, I hopped in my rental car and drove East.

I arrived just before sunset. St. Ours sits on the Richelieu River, so I had to take a ferry to reach it. The town is tiny. It cannot have grown much in the last two centuries.

I first found the church and was surprised not to find a cemetery next to it. The cemetery was a block away and the sun had set by the time I arrived. It wasn't large and many of the headstones were well over a century old. I walked around the darkness, feeling the chill of the night air and using my phone's flashlight to read the names carved into marble.  I could not find any Giards, but I did find a number of Girards and Girouards.

After a few photos, I made my way to a coffee shop on the outskirts of town, where I chatted with the lone employee in a combination of his broken English and my broken French.

I did not stay in St. Ours long enough to verify it was the home of my ancestors or find records of either of the Francois Giards or their descendent. But I stayed long enough to feel a connection. And, until I return, that is enough.

Episode 541

JD Marymee on Blockchain

JD Marymee describes the fundamentals of Blockchain and gives examples of how his customers are using it.

The Silmarillion by J.R.R. Tolkien is a collection of stories about Middle Earth - the world Tolkien created in his more famous works The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings.

It begins with the creation of the world and the Ainur, immortal beings who would take physical form and become the Valar and the Maiar. They go on to create elves, men, dwarves, and all the races that would populate Middle Earth.

It ends with the rise of Sauron, the creation of the rings of power, and the beginning of the Third Age, which is chronicled in detail in the two stories mentioned above.

In between are stories of gods and elves and men and battles and romances and how the world  of Middle Earth came to be. There is the love story of Beren and Luthien and there are epic battles and there are evil creatures, such as orcs and dragons and balrogs. There is much battling of the evil Melkor throughout the ages.

It is a very ambitious work, covering the thousands of years of the first two ages of Middle Earth.

These stories were written by J.R.R. Tolkien, but not published until after his death. His son Christopher compiled and edited them for this book.

The Silmarillion is a difficult book to read. Keeping track of the many  names of people and places is a challenge. They tend to have long, unfamiliar names, many of them go by multiple names; and they often pop up in the book once, never to return. In addition, the prose reminds me of a translation of an ancient text - descriptions are long and poetic. But

It's hard to imagine someone enjoying these stories who is not already a fan of the Middle Earth mythos. But it's hard to imagine someone who fell in love with Middle Earth through The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings not finding pleasure in these stories.

But, if you are a fan of Tolkien and wish to dive deeper into the history of the world he created, you will enjoy The Silmarillion.

It was 1864 and not much was known about the interior of the Earth. But that did not stop Jules Verne from writing an adventure story about 3 explorers, on a quest to reach the Earth's center.

Verne took what he knew about geology and combined it with his own fertile imagination to create "Voyage au centre de la Terre", which has been translated into English as Journey to the Center of the Earth.

The story is told in the first person by Axel, a young German, whose uncle - the brilliant and eccentric Professor Lidenbrock - discovers an encoded message written centuries earlier. The message describes a volcano in Iceland with underground passages that lead to the Earth's center. So, the uncle and his reluctant nephew set out for Iceland and, along with their guide Hans, descend into the bowels of the Earth in an attempt to reach the center.

The story takes a while to get going, as the men prepare for their adventure and travel to Iceland; but once they descend into the volcano, they encounter wild creatures and monstrous vegetation and violent weather and many other dangers. The second half of the novel is a thrill ride.

I like how detailed Verne is about the world his explorers encounter and how rational he is about their explanations. Of course, he was limited by the existing scientific knowledge of the 19th century; but he does well within these limits. Although many of the "scientific" points of the story are now known to be false, Verne creates a believable story by providing plausible explanations - mostly through the mouth of professor Lidenbrock - for what the party experiences.

It makes sense that prehistoric creatures could escape extinction for millennia below ground, where they were isolated from the topside environment. It makes sense that underground caverns could be illuminated by electrical charges in the gas. It makes sense that vast underground caverns could contain enormous seas on which to carry the travelers.

For some inexplicable reason, my translation changed the names of the main characters from Professor Lidenbrock and Axel to Professor Hardwegg and Harry.

But this did not diminish Journey to the Center of the Earth for me. It is a grand adventure story that I enjoyed as a teenager and enjoyed again today.

Azure Machine Learning Studio (ML Studio) gives you the ability to create experiments to generate machine learning models on existing data.

But first, you must get data into ML Studio. ML Studio runs in the Azure cloud; so, if that data is on your local hard drive, you will need to import it.

You can do so by creating a new data source.

Sign into Machine Learning Studio and select "DATASETS" from the left menu, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

To create a new dataset, click the [+NEW] button (Fig. 2) at the bottom left of the screen.

Fig. 2

From the popup menu, DATASET | FROM LOCAL FILE, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

The "Upload a new dataset" dialog displays, as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

Click the [Browse…] button and select a file from your local computer and click the [Open] button, as shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

This closes the "File Open" dialog and returns you to the "Upload a new dataset" dialog, as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

At the "ENTER A NAME FOR THE NEW DATASET" field, enter a name by which you wish to refer to this dataset in your ML experiments. This defaults to the filename on your computer.

At the "Select a dataset type…" dropdown, select the format of the file you selected.

Click the Check button when finished.

The file uploads to the cloud server and is listed in the "DATASETS" tab, as shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 7

Once you have uploaded a file as a dataset, it is available within any of your experiments. From within an ML Experiment, expand "Saved Datasets" and "My Datasets". Your file should be listed under "My Datasets", as shown in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8

You can drag this dataset onto your experiment design surface to work with it.

In this article, I showed how to create a dataset, based on a file on your local computer.

GCast 25:

Azure Durable Functions

By default, Azure Durable Functions are stateless. But durable functions allow you to maintain state across multiple, long-running functions.

In previous articles, I showed how to create an application using the Microsoft Bot Framework using Visual Studio. But you can also create a chatbot application directly within the browser.

Navigate to the Azure Portal and log in.

Click the [Create a resource] button (Fig. 1) and select AI + Machine Learning | Web App Bot, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

The "Web App Bot" blade displays, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

At the "Bot name" field, enter a unique name for your bot.

At the "Subscription" field, select the Azure subscription with which to associate this bot.

At the "Resource group" field, select an existing resource group to contain your bot or click the "Create new" link to create a new resource group.

At the "Location" field, select a region in which your bot should be located. Consider the location of any resources it will be consuming and users that will communicate with it.

At the "Pricing tier", select "F0" for a free bot or "S1" for a paid bot with fewer limitations.

At the "App name" field, enter a unique name for the web service exposed by your bot.

At the "Bot template" field, select either "Basic Bot" for a simple example of a bot using LUIS, Analytics, and Storage or "Echo Bot" for an even simpler bot.

If you select "Basic Bot" template, you will need to select the location of the LUIS service. Only a few regions currently support LUIS; but you should try to keep it close to your bot location.

At the "App service plan" field, select or create a new App Service plan. This defines the location and location of the servers on which your code will run. At creation, only S1 servers are available, but you can change this after the bot is created.

At the "Azure Storage" field, select or create an Azure Storage account in which to save bot configuration and state information.

If desired, turn on application insights and select a location for this service.

An App ID and password are required for a Microsoft Bot. By default, these values are automatically generated for your. If desired, you may explicitly set these values. 

A completed blade is shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

After a few minutes, a notification indicates the bot is created. Click the [Go to resource] button (Fig. 5) or use the left menu to search for the bot by name.

Fig. 5

By default, the bot's "Overview" blade displays, as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

To test your bot, click the "Test in Web Chat" blade and type "Hello" in the textbox labeled "Type your message here" to begin a conversation. A sample conversation for the Basic Bot is shown in Fig 7.

Fig. 7

From the "Build" blade (Fig. 8), you can click the "Open online code editor" to edit your code directly in the browser; or click the [Download bot source code] to generate and download a ZIP file of a C# solution containing your code.

In this article, I showed how to build a bot app in the portal in your browser.

Fig. 8

Jazz musicians are famous for playing the notes around the melody, adding their own interpretation of a tune. But the tremolo of Joey DeFrancesco's organ does much of that for him.

the Joey DeFrancesco Trio brought played a delightful set Sunday night at the Jazz Showcase in Chicago's South Loop. Most songs began with a mellow feel, then increased in energy until each was swinging and/or rocking.

Like most great band leaders, DeFrancesco knows to find and showcase great musicians. In this trio, it was saxophonist Victor North, whose solos captivated the audience. Drummer Khary Shahee was solid throughout and seemed determined to play every solo with his eyes closed.

The Trio played a mix of originals ("Blues in Three", "Trip Mode") and arrangements of other composers tunes, including an extended version of Cole Porter's classic "Night and Day".  One highlight was the beautiful melody of "Easy to Remember" and the final song of the night – an up-tempo, frenzied piece in which each member of the band tried to outperform one another in turn.

It wasn't a long set - maybe 75 minutes - and the second set was canceled due to low ticket sales; but those who came out saw an excellent performance.

Episode 540

Bill Wagner on Nullable Reference Types

C# 8 will have support for Nullable reference types, which will allow you to know better when you need to check for null in your variables. Bill explains the syntax and implication of this upcoming language feature.

12/2
Today I am grateful to pay off some sleep debt the past few days.

12/1
Today I am grateful for a warm day in December.

11/30
Today I am grateful that I live 1 block from a grocery store.

11/29
Today I am grateful for floor seats to see an exciting DePaul - CSU basketball game last night on my first visit to WinTrust Arena.

11/28
Today I am grateful that the severe back pain that began earlier this month is almost entirely gone.

11/27
Today I am grateful for a hot bath on a cold evening.

11/26
Today I am grateful that my toilet is finally fixed.

11/25
Today I m grateful to stay home and watch college football on a Saturday.

11/24
Today I am grateful for. a slow drive across Michigan with frequent stops yesterday.

11/23
Today I am grateful to spend Thanksgiving with my family.

11/22
Today I am grateful for my first visit to the UK.

11/21
Today I am grateful
-for a guided walking tour of historic London yesterday morning
-for a visit to the UK National Gallery yesterday afternoon
-to my new manager for traveling to London to meet me for dinner last night

11/20
Today I am grateful for lunch with Andy yesterday.

11/19
Today I am grateful to meet up with 2 old friends in a foreign country: James at lunch; and Tobiasz at dinner.

11/18
Today I am grateful to speak at #GangConf in Detroit yesterday.

11/17
Today I am grateful for:
-Lunch with Suzanne and Darcy yesterday
-Ondrej and Desi letting me stay at their home last night

11/16
Today I am grateful for my first acupuncture session yesterday.

11/15
Today I am grateful for all 4 seasons.

11/14
Today I am grateful for Taco Tuesday at Flaco's.

11/13
Today I am grateful for an independent press.

11/12
Today I am grateful for a day in Milwaukee with friends.

11/11
Today I am grateful for my first-ever visit to a chiropractor yesterday.

11/10
Today I am grateful to work from on the first very cold day of the season.

11/9
Today I am grateful for the opportunity to mentor startups and entrepreneurs at The University of Chicago Polsky Exchange the past 4 years.

11/8
Today I am grateful to see The Jeff Lorber Fusion in concert last night at The Promontory.

11/7
Today I am grateful for the opportunity to vote yesterday.

11/6
Today I am grateful for a tour yesterday of Epic Systems, one of the most creatively-designed campuses I've seen.

In his first year at University, Charles Ryder meets Sebastian Flyte and is immediately attracted to him. Sebastian is handsome, rich, charming, and carefree and the two of them quickly become inseparable, drinking together at every opportunity.

Sebastian invites Charles home to Brideshead Castle. Sebastian describes the palatial estate as "It's where my family lives". Despite the barriers Sebastian erects between himself and his family, the Flytes almost immediately accept Charles as one of their own.

The family is an interesting mix of characters - the beautiful and intelligent Julia, who looks and sounds much like Sebastian; the idealistic Cordelia; the strong and pious mother Lady Marchmain; and the father Lord Marchmain, who abandoned his family to live with his mistress in Venice. Sebastian spends much of his time at home drinking to excess, despite his family's efforts to prevent him from doing so.

Eventually, Sebastian's drinking becomes so severe that his family has no idea how to help him; and he leaves home, largely exiting the story except in secondhand reports.

But Charles and the Flytes remain and Brideshead Revisited by Evelyn Waugh is their story.

The Flytes are very wealthy and part of the upper social strata of English aristocracy. But they are also Roman Catholic, which is a rarity in Anglican England and which affects both how they view the world.

The story follows Charles through 3 phases of his life - framed by a wartime visit to an abandoned Brideshead, which sparks his memories of his life with the Flytes.

In Part 1 ("Et In Arcadia Ego"), Charles and Sebastian meet and form a very close relationship. Some critics have described this as a homosexual relationship. I'm inclined to believe it is not because Waugh never mentions anything physical between the two and he does explicitly introduce other homosexuals into the narrative. Regardless, Sebastian and Charles become close enough that they end up spending all their free time together and eventually stop seeing their other friends - a pattern into which romantic couples often fall. There is no question of the love they feel for one another. It is in this part that Charles begins to bond with the Flyte family.

In Part 2 ("Brideshead Deserted"), the characters drift apart. Sebastian is an alcoholic and has left the family and traveled to Africa. Charles marries and becomes a successful painter. The other Flytes go out in the world, seeking careers and love. It concludes with Charles reconnecting with and falling in love with Sebastian's married sister Julia. Each agrees to divorce their spouse to be free to marry one another.

In Part 3 ("A Twitch Upon the Thread"), most of the family returns to Brideshead, including the dying Lord Marchmain and deal with their changing lives. The Catholicism of the Flyte family takes center stage in this section, particularly when contrasted with the agnostic Charles and Lord Marchmain.

Brideshead is about the English idle rich between the world wars; about the British caste system; about the decline of the aristocracy; about personal responsibility; about religion and its influence on moral choices; about sexuality; and about love and friendship.

Charles is an outsider in the aristocratic world of the Flytes; but he is not a dispassionate observer. He injects himself fully into the family and they embrace him. Some even love him. But the family is filled with drama and conflict. And Charles becomes part of it.

Most of the characters deteriorate as the novel progresses. Even Brideshead Manor itself falls into disrepair as the family abandons it to pursue interests elsewhere. In the beginning, most characters possess the optimism of youth; but, by Part 3, they have either aged poorly, become disillusioned, or squandered their lives as a wandering alcoholic. Still, there is optimism in this novel. And some are at least partially saved by an epiphany and a religious conversion late in life.

Brideshead Revisited is a complex story that reminds us that life is a journey that takes us both forward and backward and that we have control over where it takes us. It is a personal story told by Charles and his recollections force him at last to reconsider his life.

Given an Azure Function, you may wish to change the URL that points to this function. There are several reasons to do this:

1. Make the URL simpler
2. Make the URL more readable
3. Make the URL conform to your organization's standards

To reassign a Function's URL, you will need to know the existing URL. To find this, select the Function and click the "Get function URL" link, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

The Function URL dialog displays, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Click the [Copy] icon to copy this URL to your clipboard. You may wish to paste this into a text document or another safe place for later use.

Each Azure Function App contains a "Proxies" section, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

Click the [+] icon to display the "New proxy" blade, as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

At the "Name" field, enter a name to identify this proxy. I like to include the name of the original function in this name, to make it easy to track to its source.

At the "Route template" field, enter a template for the new URL. This is everything after the "https://" and the domain name. If the function accepts parameters, you will need to add these and surround them with curly brackets: "{" and "}".

At the "Allowed HTTP methods" dropdown, select "All methods" or check only those methods you wish your new URL to support.

At the "Backend URL" field, enter the full original URL copied earlier to your clipboard. If the function accepts parameters, you will need to add these and surround them with curly brackets: "{" and "}". The parameter name here must match the parameter name in the "Route template" field.

An example

For example, if I created a Function with an HTTPTrigger and accepted all the defaults (as described here), you will have a function that accepts a querystring parameter of "name" and outputs "Hello, " followed by the value of name.

My original function URL looked similar to the following:

https://dgtestfa.azurewebsites.net/api/HttpTrigger1?code=idLURPj58mZrDdkAh9LkTkkz2JZRmp6/ru/DQ5RbotDpCtg/WY/pRw==

So, I entered the following values into the "New Proxy" blade:

With these settings, I can send a GET or POST request to the following url:

https://dgtestfa.azurewebsites.net/welcome/David

and receive the expected response:

Hello, David

This new URL is much simpler and easier to remember than the original one.

In this article, I showed you how to create a proxy that redirects from a new URL to an existing Azure Function.

GCast 24:

Azure Function CosmosDB Binding

Using the CosmosDB binding in an Azure Function allows you to read and write documents in an Azure CosmosDB database without writing code.

Setting up continuous deployment of an Azure Function from GitHub  is straightforward.

In this article, I already had an Azure Function (created using Visual Studio) in a GitHub  repository and an empty Azure Function App.

See this article for information on GitHub

See this article to learn how to create an Azure Function App.

Open the Azure Function App in the Azure portal, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

Click the "Platform features" link (Fig. 2) to display the "Platform features" page, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

Under "Code Deployment", click the "Deployment Center" link to open the "Deployment Center" page, as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

On the "Deployment Center" page, select the "GitHub " tile and click the [Continue] button, as shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

The wizard advances to the "Configure" page of the "Deployment Center" wizard, as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

At the "Organization" dropdown, select the GitHub  account where your code resides. If you don't see the account, you may need to give your Azure account permission to view your GitHub  repository.

At the "Repository" dropdown, select the code repository containing your Azure Functions.

At the "Branch" dropdown, select the code branch you wish to deploy whenever a change is pushed to the repository. I almost always select "master" for this.

Click the [Continue] button to advance to the "Summary" page of the "Deployment Center" wizard, as shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 7

On the "Summary" page, review your choices and click the [Finish] button if they are correct. (If they are not correct, click the [Back] button and make the necessary corrections.

In a few minutes, the function or functions in your repository will appear under your Function App in the Azure portal, as shown in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8

Any future changes pushed to the repository will automatically be added to the Function App.

For example, I can open my Visual Studio project and add a second function, as shown in Fig. 9

Fig. 9

After testing the change, I can push it to my GitHub  repository with the following commands:

git add .
git commit -m "Added a new function"
git push origin master

Listing 1

Because a webhook was added to my GitHub  repository, this change will be pushed to my Azure Function App. Fig. 10 shows the Function app a few minutes after I pushed my change to GitHub .

Fig. 10

In this article, you learned how to configure continuous deployment of your Azure Function App from a GitHub repository.

In a recent article, I showed how to create a Durable Azure Function. If you are unfamiliar with Durable Functions, I recommend you read that article first.

In that article, the Durable Function called 3 Activity Functions in sequence. No Function executed until the Function before it completed. Sometimes, it is important that Functions execute in a certain order. But sometimes it does not matter in which order a Function executes - only that they each complete successfully before another Activity Function is called. In these cases, executing sequentially is a waste of time. It is more efficient to execute these Azure Functions in parallel.

In this article, I will show how to create a durable function that executes three Activity Functions in parallel; then waits for all 3 to complete before executing a fourth function.
 
Fig. 1 illustrates this pattern.

Fig. 1
 
As we noted in the earlier article, a Durable function is triggered by a starter function, which is in turn triggered by an HTTP request, database change, timer, or any of the many triggers supported by Azure Functions, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

I created 4 Activity Functions that do nothing more than write a couple messages to the log (I use LogWarning, because it causes the text to display in yellow, making it easier to find); delay a few seconds (to simulate a long-running task); and return a string consisting of the input string, concatenated with the name of the current function. The functions are nearly identical: Only the Function Name, the message, and the length of delay are different.

The 4 functions are shown below:

    public static class Function1
     {
         [FunctionName("Function1")]
         public static async Task<string> Run(
             [ActivityTrigger] string msg,
             ILogger log)
         {
             log.LogWarning("This is Function 1");
             await Task.Delay(15000);
             log.LogWarning("Function 1 completed");
             msg += "Function 1";
            return msg;
        }
    }
  

Listing 1

    public static class Function2 
    { 
        [FunctionName("Function2")] 
        public static async Task<string> Run( 
            [ActivityTrigger] string msg, 
            ILogger log) 
        { 
             log.LogWarning("This is Function 2"); 
            await Task.Delay(10000); 
            log.LogWarning("Function 2 completed"); 
            msg += "Function 2"; 
            return msg; 
        } 
    }
  

Listing 2

    public static class Function3 
     { 
        [FunctionName("Function3")] 
        public static async Task<string> Run( 
            [ActivityTrigger] string msg, 
            ILogger log) 
        { 
            log.LogWarning("This is Function 3"); 
            await Task.Delay(5000); 
             log.LogWarning("Function 3 completed"); 
            msg += "Function 3"; 
            return msg; 
        } 
    }
  

Listing 3

    public static class Function4 
    { 
        [FunctionName("Function4")] 
        public static async Task<string> Run( 
             [ActivityTrigger] string msg, 
            ILogger log) 
         { 
            log.LogWarning("This is Function 4"); 
             int secondsDelay = new Random().Next(8, 12); 
            await Task.Delay(1000); 
            log.LogInformation("Function 4 completed"); 
            msg += "\n\rFunction 4"; 
            return msg; 
        } 
    }
  

Listing 4

We use the Parallel Task library to launch the first 3 functions and have them run in parallel; then, wait until each of the first 3 complete before executing the 4th Activity Function.

Listing 5 shows this code in our Durable Orchestration function.

    public static class DurableFunction1 
    { 
        [FunctionName("DurableFunction1")] 
         public static async Task Run( 
            [OrchestrationTrigger] DurableOrchestrationContext ctx, 
            ILogger log) 
        { 
            var msg = "Durable Function: "; 
            var parallelTasks = new Liststring>>(); 
             Task<string> task1 = ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function1", msg); 
            parallelTasks.Add(task1); 
            Task<string> task2 = ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function2", msg); 
            parallelTasks.Add(task2); 
            Task<string> task3 = ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function3", msg); 
             parallelTasks.Add(task3);

            await Task.WhenAll(parallelTasks);

            // All 3 Activity functions finished 
            msg = task1.Result + "\n\r" + task2.Result + "\n\r" + task3.Result;

            // Use LogWarning, so it shows up in Yellow, making it easier to spot 
            log.LogWarning($"All 3 Activity functions completed for orchestration {ctx.InstanceId}!");

            msg = await ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function4", msg); 
            log.LogWarning(msg);

            return new OkObjectResult(msg); 
        } 
    }
  

Listing 5

We create a new List of Tasks and add each activity to that list:

var msg = "Durable Function: ";
var parallelTasks = new Liststring>>();
Task<string> task1 = ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function1", msg);
parallelTasks.Add(task1);
Task<string> task2 = ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function2", msg);
parallelTasks.Add(task2);
Task<string> task3 = ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function3", msg);
parallelTasks.Add(task3);

The following line tells the system to wait until all 3 tasks in that list are completed.

await Task.WhenAll(parallelTasks);

When all 3 tasks complete, we resume the program flow, calling the 4th Activity and logging the output:

log.LogWarning($"All 3 Activity functions completed for orchestration {ctx.InstanceId}!");
msg = await ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function4", msg);
log.LogWarning(msg);

As in the previous article, we launch this Durable Orchestration Function with a starter function (in this case a function with an HTTP trigger), as shown in Listing 6 below.

    public static class StarterFunction1 
    { 
        [FunctionName("StarterFunction1")] 
        public static async Task Run( 
            [HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "get", "post", Route = null)] 
            HttpRequestMessage req, 
            [OrchestrationClient] DurableOrchestrationClient starter, 
            TraceWriter log) 
        { 
             log.Info("About to start orchestration");

            var orchestrationId = await starter.StartNewAsync("DurableFunction1", log); 
            return starter.CreateCheckStatusResponse(req, orchestrationId); 
        } 
    }
  

Testing the Orchestration

We can test this orchestration by running the solution, which displays the HTTP Trigger URL, as shown in Fig. 3

Fig. 3

We can then open a browser, type the HTTP Trigger URL in the address bar, and press [ENTER] to trigger the function, as shown in Fig. 4

Fig. 4

Switch back to the function output to view the messages as they scroll past. You should see output from each of the first 3 functions (although not necessarily in the order called), followed by a message indicating the first 3 are complete; then output from Function 4. This is shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

You can view this project under “Durable Functions” in this GitHub repository.

In this article, I showed how to create a Durable Orchestration Function that launches activity functions that run in parallel.

Episode 539

Brady Gaster on Marketing Azure

Brady Gaster helps to build and coordinate many of the Azure demos you see on stage at large technical conferences. He talks about how his team tells a story with tools and code.

I have read a lot of biographies in my life and many of those focused on the lives of U.S. presidents; but it's rare for me to read a book about a sitting president. I made an exception with Fear: Trump in the White House - partly because it was written by Pulitzer Prize winner Bob Woodward, whose books I've always admired; and partly because Donald Trump's presidency - on which this focuses - is different from any other presidency.

So less than two years into his term, I am reading about Trump's ascent to power.

Woodward describes some of the positives of the Trump presidency. For example, he spends a lot of time discussing a decisive and successful strike on a Syrian air base in response to Syrian President Assad's use of chemical weapons on children, in violation of international law.

But Trump supporters will probably not remember the positive coverage, because there are so many unfavourable descriptions of the President. After the first third of Fear, Woodward's descriptions of Mr. Trump are largely unflattering.

The title of the book comes from a Donald Trump quote: "Real power is fear.", a sentiment he has expressed multiple times.

Entering the White House, Donald Trump had very little understanding of the most basic principles of economics or policy or politics or governing.

For example, he repeatedly suggested that printing more money was a viable solution to the deficit. 

Worse, Trump had no interest in correcting his misconceptions. After trying unsuccessfully to educate Trump on the fact that the U.S. had years ago moved from a manufacturing-based economy to a service based economy, a frustrated advisor asked the president "Why do you have these views?" to which Mr. Trump replied, "I just always have."

He displayed similar ignorance and stubbornness in other matters.

He repeatedly insisted to his advisors that the U.S. should not spend money defending other countries and resisted the argument that doing so was an investment in American security. For example, forward-positioned American troops in South Korea reduce the alert time of a potential North Korean nuclear launch from 15 minutes down to 7 seconds. His generals and economic advisors praised this as a good investment. Despite this, Trump would raise the issue every few months, arguing that the U.S. was wasting money in South Korea.

He repeatedly insisted on huge increases in tariffs, despite advice from his economic advisors that doing so would damage the economy.

Donald Trump takes pride in his decisive action, but he often does so without seeking advice or ignoring expert advice.

He pushed hard for withdrawing from Paris Climate Accord with little consultation about the legality and impact.

He declared via Twitter that transgenders would not be allowed in the military - a major policy decision that broke a campaign promise and defied existing laws. He justified it by grossly overestimating the cost and impact transgender soldiers had on the military. The military refused to enforce this ban and it ultimately failed after an expensive court battle.

In choosing his advisors and staff, Donald Trump values personal loyalty to Donald Trump over experience, intelligence, or other qualifications.

Once hired, he ruled his people by intimidation and bullying, often publicly insulting his staff. He took delight in setting one staff member against another. The result is an abundance of infighting within the White House, which made it difficult for everyone to act in a unified manner.

The advisors in the administration do everything in their power to mitigate Trump's worse impulses. Since reasoning often fails, they often deliberately delayed executing on a directive or they stole papers from the president's desk to prevent him from signing an order or even thinking about it.

This worked because the president's attention span is short, and he has no list of things to accomplish - neither on paper nor in his head. When a paper was removed from his desk, he often did not miss it.

In one of the lowest points in the Trump presidency, the president refused to condemn Nazis and Klansmen marching in Charlottesville, VA, chanting racists slogans, such as "Jews will not replace us". Trump's initial response placed blame "on both sides". His advisors finally convinced him to deliver a speech a few days later, explicitly condemning the white supremacist groups; but Trump almost immediately regretted doing so, complaining that it made him look weak. A few days later, he reverted to his equivalency argument stating there were "very fine people on both sides". His handling of the incident drew praise from Ku Klux Klan leader David Duke and almost universal criticism from non-racists in both political parties.

Fear largely paints a picture of a petty, impetuous, ill-tempered, easily distracted, stubborn, president with little ability to listen or learn

The president's pre-conceived notions (often based on ignorance), his poor listening skills, and his frequent refusal to consider opposing viewpoints often made life frustrating for his advisors, many of whom left shortly after taking the position.

Not surprisingly, Donald Trump himself declared the book "fake", even without reading it. And Trump supporters often close their mind to anything critical of their hero, labeling any criticism - fair or otherwise as "fake news". But several things reinforce the credibility of this book. One is Woodward's reputation: He has won two Pulitzer Prizes and has written critical of public figures in both major parties. The other is that the picture Woodward paints of the president in private is consistent with the image Trump projects through Twitter and his rallies. He has never shied away from personal attacks or name-calling; he frequently overstates his own abilities in speeches, claiming to be the best in the world at multiple skills; and his closest associates have publicly attacked on another.

Woodward conducted hundreds of hours of interviews for this book. He does not identify many of his sources, but it's not difficult to guess some of them, particularly when he reports on a private conversation between Trump and one other person. Woodward requested an interview with the president, but never received a reply.

The author writes in the straightforward style of a professional journalist. Woodward seldom asserts his own opinion. Instead, he quotes the opinions of others in the administration.

Woodward closes the book with a disagreement between Trump and his lawyer about whether the President should testify as part of Special Prosecutor Robert Mueller's investigation into alleged collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia. Trump insists he would be an excellent witness. His lawyer tries to tactfully discourage Trump from testifying (he even threatens to resign as his lawyer) because he knows that Trump is a habitual liar and will almost certainly commit perjury during any sworn testimony.

As I write this review, my hope is that Donald Trump will notice it and label me an enemy, as he does with so many who disagree with him.

I was in a period of transition last week when the account rep asked if I could travel to London Monday to meet with a customer. A re-org had been announced a few days earlier and I had not yet met my new manager. Following numerous e-mails, meetings, and calls, it was decided I should make the trip. So, I found myself on Thursday afternoon purchasing an international ticket to leave for England Saturday afternoon.

Many who know me are surprised I had never visited the UK, given the amount of travel - both domestic and international - that I've done the past few years. But I was excited for my first visit.

I arrived at London's Heathrow Airport early Sunday morning, expecting to spend the day exploring the city. Unfortunately, a sleepless transatlantic flight meant that I spent much of the day in bed. I did manage to connect with a couple expats living in London, so I had lunch with James, who moved here from Ohio a few months ago; and dinner with Tobiasz, who moved to England from Poland a couple years ago.

On Monday, I also managed to connect with Andy, whom I had known for a few years from our participation in the IT Camp in Transylvania. He joined me for lunch, where I experienced  the delight that is English meat pie.

It was good to see friendly faces in a foreign country. But I came here to work, so I met with the customer Monday, where we successfully brainstormed potential projects on which we could work together. It was good that I came, and I went to dinner with a couple other Microsoft folks afterward to experience the delight that is fish and chips and English beer in an English pub.

I had Tuesday to myself, so I opened the day with a guided walking trip around London. The tour was well worth my time and money. Sights included Buckingham Palace, St. James Palace, St. James Garden, Covent Market, and Trafalgar Square. Robin, our tour guide did an excellent job of combining humor and history. The rain began to fall as we began the tour and steadily increased in intensity until we ended 3 hours later in a downpour at Westminster Abbey. A hot meal in nearby pub took the chill off nicely.

With a full belly, I decided to visit the National Gallery, where I saw works by Van Gogh, da Vinci, Bruegel, Cezanne, and others. Like most museums in London, the National Gallery offers free admission, with a suggested (but not required) donation. I could easily spend an entire day at the Gallery, but a couple hours sufficed on this day.

I walked around the city about more, passing through Leicester Square and Chinatown before heading back to my hotel.

My new manager is based in the UK, so he drove to London Tuesday evening and I had a chance to meet him face-to-face for the first time.

After we parted, I decided I needed to experience one more English beer in one more English pub before checking in for my final night and my flight home. I chose the White Hart, which bills itself as "The Oldest licensed premises in London", where I sat in a corner, sipped a lager, and read a couple chapters of "Brideshead Revisited".

It was a whirlwind trip, executed in a short time with a minimum of planning, but it was well worth the effort. I hope to return soon.

Azure Functions provide a simple way to deploy code in a scalable, cost-effective way.

By default, Azure Functions are stateless, which makes it difficult to create complex workflows with basic Azure functions - particularly long-running workflows, such as those that require human interaction.

A Durable Azure Function maintains state for a long time, without having to stay in memory, making it ideal for orchestrations. Stateful information is stored in an Azure Storage Account when the the process terminates. This saves you money, because the default pricing model for Azure functions only charges you while the function is running.

A Durable Function is not triggered in the same way as other Azure Functions (via HTTP, queue, database changes, timer, etc.) Rather, it is called from a "starter" function, which can be triggered in the usual way.

Rather than placing all logic within a single Durable Function, it usually makes more sense to split tasks into individual Activity Functions and have the Durable Function manage these. The most simple Durable Function would simply call multiple activities in sequence. A diagram of this is shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

You can create a Function App for an Azure Durable function in Visual Studio in the same way you create any function - by selecting File | New Project from the menu and selecting "Azure Functions" from the Project Templates dialog, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

Select "Azure Functions v2" from the top dropdown and HttpTrigger" from the list of templates, as shown in Fig. 3; then, click the [OK] button to create the solution and project.

Fig. 3

The new project contains a function named "Function1". Right-click this function in the Solution Explorer and rename it to "StarterFunction", as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

Open StarterFunction.cs and change the first line of the class from

[FunctionName("Function1")]

to

[FunctionName("StarterFunction")]

Now, you can add a Durable Function to the project. Right-click the project in the Solution Explorer and select Add | New Azure Function from the context menu, as shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

Name the new function "DurableFunction1", as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

At the next dialog, select "Durable Function Orchestration" from the list of triggers and click the [OK] button to create the function, as shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 7

This Durable Function will manage 3 functions, calling each one sequentially. To the project, add 3 new functions named "Function1", "Function2", and "Function3". It does not matter which trigger you choose, because we are going to overwrite the trigger. Paste the code below into each function:

    public static class Function1 
    { 
        [FunctionName("Function1")] 
        public static async Task<string> Run( 
            [ActivityTrigger] string msg, 
            ILogger log) 
        { 
            log.LogWarning("This is Function 1");

            await Task.Delay(10000); 
            msg += "Function1 done; "; 
            return msg; 
        } 
    }
  

Listing 1

    public static class Function2 
    { 
        [FunctionName("Function2")] 
        public static async Task<string> Run( 
             [ActivityTrigger] string msg, 
            ILogger log) 
        { 
            log.LogWarning("This is Function 2");

            await Task.Delay(10000); 
            msg += "Function2 done; "; 
            return msg; 
        } 
    }
  

Listing 2

    public static class Function3 
    { 
        [FunctionName("Function3")] 
        public static async Task<string> Run( 
            [ActivityTrigger] string msg, 
            ILogger log) 
        { 
            log.LogWarning("This is Function 3");

            await Task.Delay(10000); 
            msg += "Function3 done; "; 
            return msg; 
        } 
    }
  

Listing 3

As you can see, each function essentially does the same thing: log a brief message; wait 10 seconds; then, return a string consisting of the string passed in with a bit more appended to the end.

Notice also that the "msg" parameter in each function is decorated with the [ActivityTrigger] attribute, which is what makes each of these an Activity Function.

The Task.Delay() simulates a long-running activity. Imagine an activity that requires human input, such as a manager navigating to a web page and filling out a form. It might take days or weeks for this to happen. We certainly would not the application to continue running during this time: This would be an inefficient use of resources and it would be expensive. Durable functions handle this by storing state information in Azure storage; then retrieving that state when the function needs to resume.

Return to the DurableFunction1 class and replace the code with the following:

    public static class DurableFunction1 
    { 
        [FunctionName("DurableFunction1")] 
        public static async Task Run( 
            [OrchestrationTrigger] DurableOrchestrationContext ctx, 
            ILogger log) 
        { 
            var msg = "Durable Function: "; 
             msg = await ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function1", msg); 
            msg = await ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function2", msg); 
            msg = await ctx.CallActivityAsync<string>("Function3", msg);

            // Use LogWarning, so it shows up in Yellow, making it easier to spot 
            log.LogWarning(msg);

            return new OkObjectResult(msg); 
        } 
    }
  

Listing 4

You will probably have to add the following to the top of the file in order for it to compile:

using Microsoft.AspNetCore.Mvc;

In Listing 4, we see that the Durable Function calls the 3 Activity functions in order. It passes to each Activity Function the output of the previous function. At then end of the orchestration, we expect to see a concatenation of messages from each of the 3 Activity Functions.

Notice also the parameter of type DurableOrchestrationContext, which is decorated with the [OrchestrationTrigger] attribute. This identifies this as a Durable Orchestration Function.

Finally, return to the StarterFunction class and replace the code with the following:

    public static class StarterFunction
    {
        [FunctionName("StarterFunction")]
        public static async Task Run(
            [HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "get", "post", Route = null)]
            HttpRequestMessage req,
            [OrchestrationClient] DurableOrchestrationClient starter,
            ILogger log)
        {
            log.LogInformation("About to start orchestration");

            var orchestrationId = await starter.StartNewAsync("DurableFunction1", log);
            return starter.CreateCheckStatusResponse(req, orchestrationId);
        }
    }
  

Listing 5

To see this in action, compile and run the project. A console will display similar to the one in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8.

You can trigger the StarterFunction by issuing an HTTP GET to the URL displayed in the console (in this case http://localhost:7071/api/StarterFunction). Open a browser, enter this URL into the address bar, and press [ENTER].

Watch the console. You should see the log statements in each of the functions display in turn. Finally, we will see the final value of the msg variable after being passed to all 3 Activity functions. The output should look something like fig. 9.

Fig. 9

This illustrates the concepts of a Durable Orchestration Function. You can view the source code in the SequentialDurableFunctionDemo project at my Azure-Function-Demos GitHub repository.

GCast 23:

Azure Logic Apps

Learn how to create a Logic App to deploy a workflow in the cloud.

Azure Functions allow you to declaratively add bindings to external resources by decorating a C# function with binding attributes.

This means you need to write less code and the code you do write will focus more on your business logic than on updating resources.

In this article, I will show you how to add CosmosDB bindings to an Azure function in order to read from and write to a CosmosDB database.

Create an Configure CosmosDB database and collection

See this article to learn how to create a new CosmosDB instance.

Next create a Database and Collection within your CosmosDB. This article describes how to create a CosmosDB Database and Collection; or you can quickly create a Database named "ToDoList" and a Collection named "Items" from the "Quick Start" tab of the CosmosDB database you created, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

As you work with data in this database, you can view the documents on the "Data Explorer" tab, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

You will need the Connection String of your CosmosDB. You can find two connection strings on the "Keys" tab, as shown in Fig. 3. Copy either one and save it for later.

Fig. 3

Visual Studio project

Create a function in Visual Studio 2017. If you base it on the "Azure Functions" template (Fig. 4), it will have many of the necessary references.

Fig. 4

Open the local.settings.json file and add a key for "CosmosDBConnection", as shown in Fig. 5. Set its value to the connection string you copied from the "Keys" blade above.

Fig. 5

Delete the existing Function1.cs file from the project and add a new function by right-clicking the project in the Solution Explorer and selecting Add | New Function from the context menu, as shown in Fig. 6. Give the function a meaningful name.

Fig. 6

Repeat this for any function you wish to add.

Create a model of the expected data

CosmosDB is a schemaless document database, meaning that the database engine does not enforce the type of data it accepts. This is distinct from something like SQL Server, which requires you to define in advance the name, data type, and rules of each column you expect to store.

If you want to validate data, you must do so in your application. One way to do this is to create a Model class that matches the expected incoming data.

In my demo, I expect only to store data that looks like the following:

{
"id" : "001",
"description" : "Write blog post",
"isComplete" : false
}
  

So I created the ToDoItem class shown in Listing 1

public class ToDoItem 
 { 
    [JsonProperty("id")] 
    public string Id { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("description")] 
    public string Description { get; set; }

    [JsonProperty("isComplete")] 
    public bool IsComplete { get; set; } 
 }
  

Listing 1

Insert a document

The code below generates a function to insert a new document into a database. The function is triggered when you send an HTTP POST request to the function's URL (in this case, "api/InserToDoItem). The document will have the value of the JSON

[FunctionName("InsertItem")] 
public static HttpResponseMessage Run( 
    [HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Anonymous, "post", Route = null)]HttpRequestMessage req, 
    [CosmosDB( 
        databaseName: "ToDoList", 
        collectionName: "Items", 
        ConnectionStringSetting = "CosmosDBConnection")] 
    out ToDoItem document, 
    ILogger log) 
{ 
    var content = req.Content; 
    string jsonContent = content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result; 
    document = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(jsonContent);

    log.LogInformation($"C# Queue trigger function inserted one row");

    return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Created); 
}
  

Let's walk through the function.

[FunctionName("InsertItem")]

The name of the function is InsertItem

public static HttpResponseMessage Run(

The Run method executes when the function is triggered. It returns an HTTP Response Message

[HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Anonymous, "post", Route = null)]HttpRequestMessage req,

The first parameter is the incoming HTTP Request. It is decorated with HttpTrigger, indicating this is an HTTP trigger. Within this decorator's parameters, we indicate that the function can be called anonymously, that it can only be called with an HTTP POST (not GET or PUT or any other verb); and that we are not changing the default routing.

[CosmosDB(
      databaseName: "ToDoList",
      collectionName: "Items",
      ConnectionStringSetting = "CosmosDBConnection")]
     out ToDoItem document,        

The second parameter is an output parameter of type ToDoItem. We will populate this with the data in the Request body, so we type it as a ToDoItem. This parameter is decorated with the CosmosDB attribute, indicating that we will automatically insert this document into the CosmosDB. The databaseName, collectionName, and ConnectionStringSetting tell the function exactly where to store the document. The ConnectionStringSetting argument must match the name  we added     for the connection string in the local.settings.json file, as described above.

ILogger log)

The logger allows us to log information at points in the function, which can be helpful when troubleshooting and debugging.

var content = req.Content;
string jsonContent = content.ReadAsStringAsync().Result;
document = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(jsonContent);

The 3 lines above retrieve the body in the HTTP POST request and convert it to a .NET object of type ToDoItem, which validates that it is the correct format.

log.LogInformation($"C# Queue trigger function inserted one row");

This line is not necessary, but may help us to understand what part of the function executed when we are troubleshooting.

return new HttpResponseMessage(HttpStatusCode.Created);

When the document is successfully inserted, we return an HTTP 201 (Created) status to indicate success.

Retrieve all documents

The following function retrieves all the documents in a container.

    public static class GetItems
    {
        [FunctionName("GetItems")]
        public static async Task Run(
            [HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "get", Route = null)] HttpRequest req,
            [CosmosDB(
                databaseName: "ToDoList",
                collectionName: "Items",
                ConnectionStringSetting = "CosmosDBConnection",
                SqlQuery = "select * from Items")
            ]IEnumerable toDoItems,
            ILogger log)
        {
            log.LogInformation($"Function triggered");

            if (toDoItems == null)
            {
                log.LogInformation($"No Todo items found");
            }
            else
            {
                var ltodoitems = (List)toDoItems;
                if (ltodoitems.Count == 0)
                {
                    log.LogInformation($"No Todo items found");
                }
                else
                {
                    log.LogInformation($"{ltodoitems.Count} Todo items found");
                }
            }

            return new OkObjectResult(toDoItems);
        }
    }
  

Breaking down this function:

[FunctionName("GetItems")]        

The name of the function is “GetItems”.

public static async Task Run(

The Run method executes when the function is triggered. This method is asynchronous and will eventually return an ActionResult.

[HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Anonymous, "post", Route = null)]HttpRequestMessage req,

The first parameter is the incoming HTTP Request. It is decorated with HttpTrigger, indicating this is an HTTP trigger. Within this decorator's parameters, we indicate that the function can be called anonymously, that it can only be called with an HTTP GET; and that we are not changing the default routing.

[CosmosDB(
databaseName: "ToDoList",
collectionName: "Items",
ConnectionStringSetting = "CosmosDBConnection",
SqlQuery = "select * from Items") ]IEnumerable toDoItems,

This parameter is what will be returned by the function (eventually, because it runs asynchronously). It is a list of objects of type ToDoItem. When serialized, this will be transformed into an array of JSON objects. This parameter is decorated with the CosmosDB attribute, indicating that we will automatically retrieve the list from the CosmosDB. The databaseName, collectionName, and ConnectionStringSetting tell the function exactly where to store the document. The SQlQuery tells what query to run to retrieve the data (in this case, return all the rows)

ILogger log)

The logger allows us to log information at points in the function, which can be helpful when troubleshooting and debugging.

log.LogInformation($"Function triggered");
if (toDoItems == null)
    {
         log.LogInformation($"No Todo items found");
    }
    else
    {
         var ltodoitems = (List)toDoItems;
         if (ltodoitems.Count == 0)
        {
            log.LogInformation($"No Todo items found");
        }
        else
        {
             log.LogInformation($"{ltodoitems.Count} Todo items found");
         }
    }

    public static class GetItemById
    {
        [FunctionName("GetItemById")]
            public static async Task Run(
            [HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "get", Route = "GetItem/{id}")] HttpRequestMessage req,
            [CosmosDB(
                databaseName: "ToDoList",
                collectionName: "Items",
                ConnectionStringSetting = "CosmosDBConnection",
                Id = "{id}")
            ]ToDoItem toDoItem,
            ILogger log)
        {
            log.LogInformation($"Function triggered");

            if (toDoItem == null)
            {
                log.LogInformation($"Item not found");
                return new NotFoundObjectResult("Id not found in collection");
            }
            else
            {
                log.LogInformation($"Found ToDo item {toDoItem.Description}");
                return new OkObjectResult(toDoItem);
            }

        }
    }
  

    public static class GetCompleteItems
    {
        [FunctionName("GetCompleteItems")]
        public static async Task Run(
            [HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "get", Route = null)] HttpRequest req,
            [CosmosDB(
                databaseName: "ToDoList",
                collectionName: "Items",
                ConnectionStringSetting = "CosmosDBConnection",
                SqlQuery = "select * from Items i where i.isComplete")
            ]IEnumerable toDoItems,
            ILogger log)
        {
            log.LogInformation($"Function triggered");

            if (toDoItems == null)
            {
                log.LogInformation($"No complete Todo items found");
            }
            else
            {
                var ltodoitems = (List)toDoItems;
                if (ltodoitems.Count == 0)
                {
                    log.LogInformation($"No complete Todo items found");
                }
                else
                {
                    log.LogInformation($"{ltodoitems.Count} Todo items found");
                }
            }

            return new OkObjectResult(toDoItems);
        }
    }
  

In previous articles, I showed how to create Azure Function Apps and Azure Functions directly in the Azure Portal. You can also create Function Apps and Functions in Visual Studio and then deploy them to Azure. I prefer to do this, because it makes it easier to get my code into source control.

Before working with and creating Azure artifacts in Visual Studio, you must install the Azure tools. To install these tools, launch Visual Studio installer and check "Azure Development, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

Once the Azure tools are installed, launch Visual Studio and select File | New | Project  from the menu, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

In the "New Project" dialog, expand Visual C# | Cloud in the left tree and select "Azure Functions" from the list of templates; then enter a project name and location, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

The next dialog (Fig. 4) presents a list of options for your Azure Function.

Fig. 4

In the top dropdown, select "Azure Functions v2".

Select "Http Trigger" to create a function that will be triggered by an HTTP GET or POST to a web service URL.

At the "Storage Account" dropdown, select "Storage Emulator". This works well for running and testing your function locally. You can change this to an Azure Storage Account when you deploy the Function to Azure.

At the "Access rights" dropdown, select "Function".

Click the [OK] button to create an Azure Function App with a single Azure Function.

A function is generated with the following code:

[FunctionName("Function1")]
public static async Task Run(
    [HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "get", "post", Route = null)] HttpRequest req,
    ILogger log)
{
    log.LogInformation("C# HTTP trigger function processed a request.");

    string name = req.Query["name"];

    string requestBody = await new StreamReader(req.Body).ReadToEndAsync();
    dynamic data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(requestBody);
    name = name ?? data?.name;

    return name != null
        ? (ActionResult)new OkObjectResult($"Hello, {name}")
        : new BadRequestObjectResult("Please pass a name on the query string or in the request body");
}
  

Listing 1

The method is decorated with the "FunctionName" attribute, which provides the name of the function.

[FunctionName("Function1")]
  

Notice that the first parameter is decorated with

[HttpTrigger(AuthorizationLevel.Function, "get", "post", Route = null)]
  

This tells the system that the Function is triggered by an HTTP request and that it will request either a GET or POST verb.

We also pass in an ILogger, so that we can output debugging information.

Let's walk through the code in this function

Log some information, so we can confirm the function was properly triggered.

log.LogInformation("C# HTTP trigger function processed a request.");
  

If a "name" parameter is passed in the querystring, capture the value of this parameter.

string name = req.Query["name"];
  

If this is a POST request, there may be information sent in the request body. Retrieve this information and convert it to a JSON object:

string requestBody = await new StreamReader(req.Body).ReadToEndAsync(); 
dynamic data = JsonConvert.DeserializeObject(requestBody);
  

If the "name" parameter was passed in the querystring, use that; if not, look for it in the JSON object from the request body.

name = name ?? data?.name;
  

If a "name" parameter was found, return an HTTP Response Code 200 (OK) with a body containing the text "Hello, " followed by the value of the name.

If no "name" parameter was passed, return an HTTP Response Code 400 (Bad Request) with a message into the body indicating a name is required.

return name != null 
    ? (ActionResult)new OkObjectResult($"Hello, {name}") 
    : new BadRequestObjectResult("Please pass a name on the query string or in the request body");
  

Publish App

One quick way to publish a Function App to Azure is directly from Visual Studio. To do this, right-click the project in the Solution Explorer and select "Publish" from the context menu, as shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

The "Pick a publish target" dialog displays, as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

Check the "Run from ZIP" checkbox.

Select either the "Create New" or "Select Existing" radio button, depending whether you wish to deploy to an existing or a newly-created Azure Function; then click the [Publish] button.

The follow-up dialog if you select "Create New" is shown in Fig. 7a and for "Select existing" in Fig. 7b.

Click the [OK] or [Create] button at the bottom of the follow-up dialog to deploy the Function.

This article showed how to create an Azure Function App in Visual Studio, making it easier to test locally and integrate your code with source control.

Episode 538

Jeff Fritz on Live Streaming Coding

Jeff Fritz uses twitch.tv to live stream while he codes with others. He talks about how, why, and when he does it.

Sometimes you can go home again.

I was a member of the Great Lakes Area .NET User Group (a.k.a. GANG) for years and spent some time on the board, including 2 years as President. But I've had much less interaction with them since joining Microsoft and moving to Chicago in 2014.

So, I was excited when my friend Ondrej called to tell me that GANG was hosting a conference and I could speak there if I wanted. I wanted to be a part of this event, so I made the trek from back to Detroit.

The event was held at the Microsoft offices in downtown Detroit. About 70 people came to hear a presentation on both technical topics and soft skills.

Cassandra Faris opened the conference telling people how they can manage and  promote your personal brand.

J Tower was next with a presentation on how to use .NET Standard to share code among different types of applications and platforms.

I wrote a presentation about Azure Functions and delivered for the first time at this event.

Kevin Davis's presentation titled "Living your Best (Developer) Life" talked about how to choose and manage your career.

Aydin Akcasu had the best demos of the day, showing Bluetooth devices integrating  with the Chrome web browser.

Finally, Daniel Davis described the benefits of clean code and how to achieve it.

The event reminded me of a similar Saturday event I hosted to celebrate GANG'S 10-year anniversary back in 2011. This is the second year in a row, GANG has held GANGConf and president Ryan Albertson promised to do it again next year.
I hope to be there again for it.

The nuclear fallout from World War Terminus has killed most of earth's animals, left a cloud of radioactive dust across the planet, and encouraged the people of Earth to emigrate to colonies on other planets. Those left on earth need to find a way to survive in a polluted and chaotic world.

The biggest advance that science has brought is the creation of androids - creatures that look exactly like humans and are designed to serve humans on the off-world colonies. But androids lack empathy and sometimes they escape their servitude, kill their human masters, and hide among the humans of Earth.

Rick Deckard is a bounty hunter, tasked with tracking down renegade androids. The police have developed a test to identify androids based on their lack of empathy.

In one 2-day period, Deckard tracks down 6 killer androids and struggles with his own purpose in life.

Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep by Philip K. Dick tells the story of these two days and Deckard's pursuit of the androids. But mostly it tells of how Deckard and the rest of Earth's people have lost its own humanity. They spend their days using machines to alter their moods and collecting animals as status symbols (or lifelike mechanical animals, if they cannot find the real ones). Deckard himself is troubled by the empathy he feels towards the androids he is hired to destroy.

The story's title refers to Deckard's pet electric sheep that he keeps in order to impress his wife and neighbors.

Dick does a masterful job painting a dystopian society. The post-nuclear-war world is filthy and gray and empty, and people struggle to maintain a sense of normalcy. The world outside is so bland that they use a "Mood Organ" - a mood altering machine to dial their emotions either up and down. They have latched onto a religion, which is based on a VR recreation of a martyr experiencing a stoning; The most popular TV show features Buster Friendly, a goofy host, who holds his audiences in near-religious control.

Dick focuses on Deckard's struggle to find meaning in life. He questions his job: destroying androids for whom he feels empathy. He does it for the money in hopes of making his wife happy with a live animal. But his wife spends her days distracted by the Mood Organ.

Society demonizes androids for their lack of empathy; but many humans lack this same quality: the radioactive fallout caused brain damage in some humans and no one cares about them; And Deckard's years of bounty hunting take their toll on his ability to empathize.

It's worth noting that Ridley Scott's excellent 1982 movie "Blade Runner" is loosely based on this novel, which certainly boosted the book's popularity. But the book is far more cerebral than the movie, exploring themes of religion and human nature and humanity. 

"Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep" is recommended to any fan of science fiction.

In a previous article, I showed you how to create a new Azure Function with an HTTP trigger.

After you create an Azure Function, it is useful to be able to test it right in the Azure Portal.

To test an Azure function, log into the Azure Portal, open the Function App, and select your Function, as shown in Fig. 1

Fig. 1

Click the [Run] button (Fig. 2) above the Function to open a Log output window and a Testing dialog, as shown in in Fig. 3.

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

In the Test dialog on the right, you can change the HTTP verb by selecting either "POST" or "GET" in the "HTTP method" dropdown, as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

If you select the "POST" HTTP method, the "Request body" section (Fig. 5) is enabled and you can modify the data you want to send in the HTTP Body of your request.

Fig. 5

You can add querystring parameters to your request by clicking the "+ Add parameter" link under "Query" (Fig. 6) and entering a name and value of the parameter, as shown in Fig. 7.

Fig. 6

Fig. 7

Repeat this for as many querystring parameters as you need.

Similarly, you can add name/value pairs to the HTTP header of your  request by clicking the "+ Add header" link and entering the name and value of each header, as shown in Fig. 8.

Fig. 8

When everything is configured the way you want, click the [Run] button at the bottom (Fig.9) to call the web service and trigger your function.

Fig. 9

The "Output" section (Fig. 10) will display the HTTP response, as well as any text returned in the body of the response. Any response between 200 and 299 is good; any response of 400 and above indicates an error.

Fig. 10

If you function outputs log information, you will see this in the Log output window, as shown in Fig. 11.

Fig. 11

In this article, I showed how to test a function from within the Azure portal. You should create more sophisticated automated test as part of your build/deploy process, but this serves as a good, simple way to make sure your function is behaving as expected after you create it.

GCast 22:

Creating an Azure Function Proxy

Learn how to create a proxy URL using Azure Functions

In the last article, I showed how to create an Azure Function App. A Function App is not useful by itself: it is just a container for functions, which perform the real work.

Once you have created an Azure Function App, you will want to add one or more Functions to it.

Navigate to the Azure Portal, log in, and open your Function app, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

Click either the [+] icon next to the "Functions" section on the left (Fig. 2) or the [New function] button at the bottom (Fig. 3)

Fig. 2

Fig. 3

NOTE: If this Function App already contains at least one function, the [New function] button does not display.

The "CHOOSE A DEVELOPMENT ENVIRONMENT" page of the "Azure Functions for .NET - getting started" dialog displays, as shown in Fig. 4

Fig. 4

Select the [In-portal] tile and click the [Continue] button to advance to the "CREATE A FUNCTION" page, as shown in Fig. 5

Fig. 5

Two triggers are listed: "Webhook+API", which will cause your function to execute after a web service URL is hit; and "Timer", which allows you to schedule your function to run at regular intervals. You can see more triggers by clicking the "More templates…" tile; but, for this demo, select the [Webhook+API] tile and click the [Create] button. After a few seconds, a function is created with an HTTP trigger and some sample code, as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

This sample function accepts a "name" parameter (either in the querystring or in the Body of a POST request) and returns an HTTP 200 (OK) response with the string "Hello, ", followed by the value of the name parameter. If no "name" parameter is supplied,  it returns a 400 (Bad Request) response with an error message.

You can now modify and save this code as you like.

In the next article, I will show you how to test this function within the portal.

An Azure Function allows you to deploy scalable code to the cloud without worrying about the server or other infrastructure issues.

Azure Functions are contained within a Function App, so you need to create a Function App first.  To create a Function App, navigate to the Azure Portal, sign in and click the [Create a resource] button, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

From the menu, select Compute | Function App, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

The "Create Function App" blade displays as shown in Fig. 3

Fig. 3

At the "App Name" field, enter a unique name for your Function App.

At the "Subscription" field, select the Azure subscription with which to associate this Function App. Most people will have only one subscription.

At the "Resource Group" field, select "Create new" and enter the name of a Resource Group to create or select "Use existing" and select an existing resource group in which to store your Function App. A Resource Group is an organizational grouping of related assets in Azure.

At the "OS" radio button, select the operating system (Windows or Linux) on which you wish to host your Function App.

At the Hosting plan, select either "Consumption Plan" or "App Service Plan". With the Consumption Plan, you only pay for the time that your functions are running. Since most functions do not run 24 hours a day / 7 days a week, this can be a real cost savings. With the App Service Plan, you pay as long as your functions are available. This is appropriate if you expect clients to be constantly calling your functions.

At the "Location" field, enter a region in which you want your Functions to run. In order to minimize latency, you should select a region close to any resources with which the Functions will interact.

At the "Runtime Stack" dropdown, select one of the platforms. Select ".NET" if you plan to write your code in C# or F#. Select "JavaScript" if you plan to create a node function. Select "Java" if you plan to write your code in Java. As of this writing, Java is in Preview, so performance is not guaranteed.

If you selected "Consumption Plan" hosting plan, you will be prompted for a storage account. Function definitions will be stored in this account. Select an existing storage account or create a new one. I prefer to use a storage account for all my Function Apps in a given Resource Group.

For extra monitoring, turn on Application Insights and select the same region in which your Function App is located. If this region is not available, select a nearby region.

Click the [Create] button to create your Function App.

After your Function App is created, you will want to add a Function to it. I will show how to do this in the next article.

Episode 537

Robert Greene on DevOps

Robert Greene defines DevOps, discusses its advantages, and describes how to accomplish it with Microsoft tooling.

Frankenstein is the story of Victor Frankenstein, a scientist who discovers a way to re-animate dead tissue and uses this knowledge to build a giant, grotesque creature. Victor is repulsed by his creation and rejects it, which angers the creature and inspires him to seek revenge on his creator by destroying those closest to him.

The story of Frankenstein is familiar to almost everyone - primarily through the 1931 movie and the works that it inspired. But the original novel by Mary Wollstonecraft Shelley, published in 1818 offers much that later interpretations do not.

The novel differs from most later interpretations of the story by how much is given to the creature displays complex feelings and motivations. Unlike Karloff's mute, shuffling monstrosity, Shelley's monster was self-educated, literate, and articulate. He feels the betrayal of his maker and the pain of rejection by the world. He takes out this pain by destroying everyone that Victor loves.

In this classic horror novel, Shelley explores the dangers of playing God, the power of loneliness, and the fear of losing all that we love. She even brings in the responsibilities that fathers have for their children - a topic at least as relevant today as it was 200 years ago. Victor Frankenstein is the ultimate deadbeat dad. he runs from his responsibilities, abandoning his offspring when needed most.

There are two evil creatures in this book. Victor shirks his responsibilities and abandons the creature he created, primarily because of its physical deformities. The monster dreamed of love and acceptance; but turned to evil and violence and revenge when he was rejected by his creator and by the world.

Mary Shelley was a pioneer in the science fiction and the horror genres and the longevity of "Frankenstein" is a testament to this standing.

It took 40 years of recording for Jeff Lorber to finally win a Grammy. After 6 times a bridesmaid,
"Prototype" by The Jeff Lorber Fusion won the award for Best Contemporary Instrumental Album this January.

And it took just as long for me to finally see The Jeff Lorber Fusion in concert, which I did Wednesday night at The Promontory in Chicago's Hyde Park.

Reserved seating was listed as "Sold Out" but I managed to get a seat at a table, thanks to someone canceling and me showing up an hour before the doors opened.

The concert was a fundraiser for the Musical Arts Institute, so the evening began with performances by a number of members and students of the institute. It was entertaining half hour of music, but the performers definitely amateurs - many of them in their teens.

Not so with the main act. Jeff Lorber is as professional as they come, and he brought technical proficiency with high energy jazz fusion throughout his set.

Lorber played with a trio that included two local Chicagoans, including bassist Michael Manson (director of the Musical Arts Institute), who nearly stole the show with his amazing playing and a face that morphed like a jellyfish.

But it was Jeff Lorber's show and he did not disappoint. The energy remained high throughout the night and every song was great. Highlights included "What's the Deal" and "Test Drive" from his Grammy-winning album; "Montserrat" from "Galaxy"; and "Rain Dance", a song that has been sampled by multiple artists, including Notorious B.I.G., Ariana Grande, Ja Rule, and Mariah Carey.  I don't recall any ballads during the show.

The trio did not play a long set - perhaps 90 minutes - but the audience left feeling we got our money's worth.

Photos

Azure Functions provide a simple way to deploy code in a scalable, cost-effective way.

The beauty of Azure functions is that the developer does not need to worry about where they are deployed. Azure takes care of spinning up a server and other resources at the appropriate time and scaling out a Function as demand increases. The infrastructure is abstracted away from the developer allowing the developer to focus on the code and the business problem.

Azure functions can be written in C#, F#, JavaScript, or Java.

Each Function has a "Trigger" which, as the name implies is an event that causes the function code to run. This can be an HTTP request, a message on a queue or message bus, delivery of an email, data inserted into a blob storage container or CosmosDB database, or a timed interval.

Triggers are just one way that Azure functions can easily connect to other services. There are also bindings available to interact with databases, queues, and other services with a minimum of code.

One nice feature of Azure Function Apps is the "Consumption Plan" pricing model. Selecting this plan means that you are only charged while your function is running, which can save plenty of money - particularly if your app is not running 24 hours a day every day. Of course, you can also choose to run your function as part of an App Service Plan, in which case you will pay for the entire time the function is available, whether or not it is running. This may be desirable if you already have an App Service Plan running and want to include your functions in that same plan.

You can create functions directly in the Azure Portal. Or you can create them locally using tools like Visual Studio and Visual Code and deploy them either directly from the IDE or through your continuous integration processes.

The source code for the Azure Functions run-time is even open source! Check out the code at https://github.com/Azure/azure-functions-host.

You can get a free Azure account at http://azure.com. You can read more about Azure functions at https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions.

In upcoming articles, I'll show you how to create, deploy, test, and manage Azure functions.

GCast 21:

Azure Functions Continuous Deployment

Learn how to configure continuous deployment from GitHub to Azure functions. Each time you push code changes to GitHub, that code is automatically deployed to Azure.

In the last article, I showed how to create a new Azure CosmosDB account. In this article, I will show how to add a database with containers to that account.

Navigate to the Azure portal and sign in; then open your Azure CosmosDB account. You may be directed to either the "Quick start" blade (Fig. 1) or the "Overview" blade (Fig. 2)

Fig. 1

Fig. 2

Open the "Data Explorer" blade, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

For a newly-created account, no databases are listed.

To create a new database, click the [New Database] button (Fig. 4).

Fig. 4

The "New Database" blade displays, as shown in Fig. 5.

Fig. 5

At the "Database id" field, enter a unique id for your database.

Click the [OK] button.

After a few seconds, a new database will display in the "Data Explorer" blade, as shown in Fig. 6.

Fig. 6

In a CosmosDB database, documents are stored within collections, which help you to organize your data. To create  a new collection, right-click the database and select "New Collection" from the context menu, as shown in Fig. 7

Fig. 7

The "Add Collection" blade displays, as shown in Fig. 8

Fig. 8

At the "Collection Id" field, enter a name for your collection. Collection names must be unique within a database.

Select the appropriate Storage capacity. If you expect to store a small amount of data, select "Fixed"; for databases expected to grow beyond 10GB, select "Unlimited".

If you select unlimited, you can specify a path within each document to find the Partition Key. A Partition Key is used to determine which data to keep together when distributing data across multiple servers.

At the "Throughput" field, enter the number of 1K documents per second you need to process. You will pay more for higher throughput, so consider whether you need a higher throughput before increasing this value.

Click the [OK] button to create the collection.

The new collection will display beneath the database as shown in Fig. 9. You may need to expand the tree in order to see the collection.

Fig. 9

You can write to and read from this collection programmatically or you can upload document within the portal by clicking the [Upload] button, as shown in Fig. 10.

Fig. 10

Data in a CosmosDB account is stored in databases and collections. This article showed how to create these.

Azure CosmosDB is a flexible, fast, reliable, scalable, geographically distributed NoSQL database.

You can create a CosmosDB account and database in the Azure poral.

Navigate to the Azure portal and login.

Click the [Create a resource] button, as shown in Fig. 1.

Fig. 1

From the menu, select Database | Azure CosmosDB, as shown in Fig. 2.

Fig. 2

The "Create Azure CosmosDB Account" blade displays, as shown in Fig. 3.

Fig. 3

At the Subscription dropdown, select your Azure subscription. Most of you will have only one subscription.

At the Resource Group dropdown, select an existing resource group or click "Create new" to display the New Resource Group dialog, as shown in Fig. 4.

Fig. 4

In the New Resource Group dialog, enter a unique name for your resource group and click the [OK] button.

At the "API" dropdown, select the API you want to use to access the databases in this account, as shown in Fig. 5.  Options are

• Core (SQL)
• MongoDB
• Cassandra
• Azure Table
• Gremlin (graph)

Fig. 5

If you are migrating data from another database, you may want to choose the API that resembles your old database in order to minimize changes to the client code accessing the database. If this is a new database, you may wish to choose the API with which you and your team are most familiar.

At the "Location" dropdown, select a region in which to store your data. It is a good idea to keep your data near your users and/or near any services that will interact with your data.

The "Geo-Redundancy" and "Multi-region writes" options allow you to globally distribute your data. There is an extra charge for enabling these features.

You can enable Geo-Redundancy by clicking the [Enable] button next to "Geo-Redundancy". This creates a copy of your data in another nearby region and keeps that data in sync.

Click the [Enable] button next to "Multi-region writes" if you wish to allow data to be written in multiple regions. This will improve the performance when writing data to the database.

Notice the tabs at the top of the page (Fig. 5). The "Basics" tab displays first, but the "Network", "Tags", and "Summary" tabs are also available.

Fig. 6

The "Network" tab (Fig. 7) allows you to add your CosmosDB account to a specific Virtual Network and Subnet. This is not required.

Fig. 7

The "Tags" tab (Fig. 8) allows you to assign metadata to this CosmosDB account, which may help when grouping together related accounts on a report. This is not required.

Fig. 8

The "Summary" tab (Fig. 9) displays all the options you have chosen and validates that you completed the required responses and that all responses are consistent. You can navigate to this tab by clicking the "Summary" tab link at the top or by clicking the [Review + create] button on any other tab.

Fig. 9

Click the [Create] button to begin creating your CosmosDB account. This will take a few minutes. A message displays as shown in Fig. 10 when the account is created and deployed.

Fig. 10

As you can see, there are a number of links to documentation and tutorials.

Click the [Go to resource] button to open the CosmosDB account. By default, the "Quick start" blade displays, as shown in Fig. 11.

Fig. 11

In this article, I showed how to create a new Azure CosmosDB account. In the next article, I will show how to add a database with containers to that account.

Episode 536

Hao Luo on Rust

Hao Luo talks about the Rust programming language, how it works, and how he is using it.

11/4
Today I am grateful for my first visit to Montreal in almost 12 years.

11/3
Today I am grateful to visit St. Ours, Quebec yesterday - home of some of my ancestors.

11/2
Today I am grateful for Montreal smoked meats and poutine.

11/1
Today I am grateful for dinner last night at a rotating Portuguese restaurant high above Montreal with Brent, LaBrina, and Sarah.

10/31
Today I am grateful to attend my first home Montreal Canadiens game yesterday.

10/30
Today I am grateful for dinner with Nick last night.

10/29
Today I am grateful to attend an exciting Red Wings victory at Little Caesars Arena last night.

10/28
Today I am grateful to be my nephew Sterling's sponsor for his confirmation last night.

10/27
Today I am grateful for dinner last night with Esteban.

10/26
Today I am grateful for a week in Dallas.

10/25
Today I am grateful for dinner last night with Tristan, Joe, Timothy, Sergii, Danny, Denis, and Ashley.

10/24
Today I am grateful to attend a Dallas Stars home game for the first time.

10/23
Today I am grateful for dinner last night with Amanda, Timothy, and Sergii.

10/22
Today I am grateful for Texas BBQ.

10/21
Today I am grateful for all the good restaurants in Chicago.

10/20
Today I am grateful to wake up to this view every morning.

10/19
Today I am grateful for free pound cake and ice cream at the Grand Opening of a local bakery yesterday.

10/18
Today I am grateful for the colors of autumn.

10/17
Today I am grateful for a hot bath last night.

10/16
Today I am grateful for dinner with Corey last night.

10/15
Today I am grateful for dinner with Ryan last night, where I was able to introduce him to his first Chicago-style hot dog.

10/14
Today I am grateful that, after 5 years, 3 roles, and 5 managers, I still enjoy working at Microsoft.

10/13
Today I am grateful for an empty seat next to me on my flights to and from Seattle.

10/12
Today I am grateful for the DJ playing so much non-American music at last night's party.

10/11
Today I am grateful to Brent for bringing to Seattle homemade BBQ to share with us.

10/10
Today I am grateful to learn from my teammates.

10/9
Today I am grateful for dinner last night in downtown Seattle with Brent, Carl, and Michael.

10/8
Today I am grateful to meet Richard for a drink last night.

10/7
Today I am grateful that, for the first time in my life, I have hired someone to clean my home twice a month.

1. A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
2. A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
3. A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.

These are the 3 laws of robotics. They are built into the core technology of a robot's positronic brain and no robot may violate them. All robotic technology is built on top of these laws, ensuring that robots will be safe.

In the 1940s, Isaac Asimov wrote a series of stories speculating on the future evolution of robots and, in 1950, he compiled them into a single volume titled I, Robot. Although only loosely connected, most of the stories include Dr. Susan Calvin, a  Robopsychologist at U.S. Robotics, the only company able to manufacture these machines.

Many of the stories in this book revolve around the 3 laws - particularly exploring what happens when the laws come into conflict or when an ambiguous situation makes it difficult for a robot to interpret and apply the laws. The greater the conflict, the more stress placed on a positronic brain, which is why robots need a psychologist and humans need Susan Calvin to help them understand robots.

These stories launched a series of very good Robot novels for Asimov, who eventually tied the universe in which his robots existed into his Empire and Foundation series. Asimov's robots and the Robotics Laws influenced many other books and movies featuring mechanical men; and even influenced the real world field of robotics, as his three laws are often brought up when discussing the ethics of the technology. In fact, the term "robotics" was invented by Asimov and first appeared in a story in this collection.

I, Robot succeeds because it is based on plausible scientific principles and because it raises questions that science would be likely to encounter as it advances. There are no strong characters throughout the series (Calvin is a minor character in most of them), but the story and the ethical questions carry them along well.

My favourite story is "Liar", which is about a robot that gains the ability to read minds and uses this power to do what he believes will bring no harm to humans. It is a parable of the result of good intentions wrongly applied.

I, Robot is a reminder that advancing technology brings with it ethical choices and questions. Any fan of science fiction will enjoy it.

Sometimes, you want to store quotation marks within a string, as in the following example

"Alive", she cried!

In C#, there are at least 4 ways to embed a quote within a string:

1. Escape quote with a backslash
2. Precede string with @ and use double quotes
3. Use the corresponding ASCII character
4. Use the Hexadecimal Unicode character

Escape with backslash

You can precede any escaped character with a backslash ("\") to preserve that character.

For example:

var lyrics = "\"Alive\", she cried!"
  

Precede with @ and use double quotes

If you precede the string with the "@" character, you can use a double set of quotation marks to indicate a single set of quotation marks within a string.

For example:

var lyrics = @"""Alive"", she cried!"
  

Use the ASCII character

A double quote is the ASCII value 34, so you can append this to your string.

For example:

quote = (char)34 + "Alive" + (char)34 + ", she cried!";
  

Use the Hexadecimal Unicode character

You can escape Unicode characters by preceding the hexadecimal value with "\u". The hexadecimal value of a double quote is 0022, so you can include this in your string.

For example:

quote = "\u0022Alive\u0022, she cried!";
  

These techniques work for many other characters that are difficult to represent within quotation marks, such as line feeds, non-English characters, and non-printing characters.

GCast 20:

Creating an Azure Function in Visual Studio

Episode 535

Rajasa Savant on Serverless Azure

Microsoft Engineer Rajasa Savant describes the "Serverless" technologies available in Microsoft Azure