Azure Functions allow small discrete pieces of code to execute in response to an external stimulus such as a HTTP request, message queue message, new blob data, etc. They can also be triggered manually from within the Azure Portal or set to execute on a specified schedule.

My new Azure Function Triggers Quick Start  Pluralsight course shows how to get up to speed quickly with each of the function trigger types such as:

• Manual Triggers
• Azure Queue Storage Triggers
• Blob Triggers
• Timer Triggers
• HTTP Triggers
• Webhook Triggers
• Service Bus Triggers
• Event Hub Triggers

You can check out the course here.

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One of the interesting possibilities with the (currently in preview) Azure Function Proxies is the ability to create HTTP APIs that can be versioned and also deployed/managed independently.

For example, suppose there is a API that lives at the root “https://dctdemoapi.azurewebsites.net/api". We could have multiple resources under this root such as customer, products, etc.

So to get the product with an id of 42 we’d construct: “https://dctdemoapi.azurewebsites.net/api/products?id=42”.

If we wanted the ability to version the API we could construct “https://dctdemoapi.azurewebsites.net/api/v1/products?id=42” for version 1 and “https://dctdemoapi.azurewebsites.net/api/v2/products?id=42” for version 2, etc.

Using proxies we can use the format “https://dctdemoapi.azurewebsites.net/api/[VERSION]/[RESOURCE]?[PARAMS]”

Now we can create 2 proxies (for example in an Azure Function called “dctdemoapi”) that forwards the HTTP requests to other Function Apps (in this example dctdemoapiv1 and dctdemoapiv2).

Screenshots of the proxies are as follows:

And the respective proxies.json config file:

{
    "proxies": {
        "v1": {
            "matchCondition": {
                "route": "api/v1/{*restOfPath}"
            },
            "backendUri": "https://dctdemoapiv1.azurewebsites.net/api/{restOfPath}"
        },
        "v2": {
            "matchCondition": {
                "route": "api/v2/{*restOfPath}"
            },
            "backendUri": "https://dctdemoapiv2.azurewebsites.net/api/{restOfPath}"
        }
    }
}

Notice in the proxy config the use of the wildcard term “{*restOfPath}” – this will pass the remainder of the path segments to the backend URL, for example “products”, meaning a request to “https://dctdemoapi.azurewebsites.net/api/v1/products?id=42” will be sent to “https://dctdemoapiv1.azurewebsites.net/api/products?id=42”; and “https://dctdemoapi.azurewebsites.net/api/v2/products?id=42” will be sent to “https://dctdemoapiv2.azurewebsites.net/api/products?id=42”.

Now versions of the API can be updated/monitored/managed/etc independently because they are separate Function App instances, but code duplication is a potential problem; common business logic could however be compiled into an assembly and referenced in both Function Apps.

To jump-start your Azure Functions knowledge check out my Azure Function Triggers Quick Start Pluralsight course.

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One of the NuGet packages I maintain is approaching 100,000 downloads. I thought it would be nice to get a notification on my phone when the number of downloads hit 100,000.

To implement this I installed the Flow app on my iPhone, wrote an Azure Function that executes on a timer, and calls into Flow.

Creating a Flow

The first step is to create a new Microsoft Flow that is triggered by a HTTP Post being sent to it.

The flow uses a Request trigger and a URL is auto generated by which the flow can be initiated.

The second step is the Notification action that results in a notification being raised in the Flow app for iOS.

Creating an Azure Function with Timer Trigger

Now that there is a URL to POST to to create notifications, a timer-triggered Azure Function can be created.

This function screen scrapes the NuGet page (I’m sure there’s a more elegant/less brittle way of doing this) and grabbing the HTML element containing the total downloads. If the total number of downloads >= 100,000 , then the flow URL will be called with a message in the body. The timer schedule runs once per day. I’ll have to manually disable the function once > 100,000 downloads are met.

The function code:

using System.Net;
using HtmlAgilityPack;
using System.Globalization;
using System.Text;

public static async Task Run(TimerInfo myTimer, TraceWriter log)
{       
    try
    {
        string html = new WebClient().DownloadString("https://www.nuget.org/packages/FeatureToggle");

        HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
        doc.LoadHtml(html);     
                            
        HtmlNode downloadsNode = doc.DocumentNode
                                    .Descendants("p")
                                    .First(x => x.Attributes.Contains("class") &&  
                                                x.Attributes["class"].Value.Contains("stat-number"));                        

        int totalDownloads = int.Parse(downloadsNode.InnerText, NumberStyles.AllowThousands);
        
        bool thresholdMetOrExceeded = totalDownloads >= 1; // 1 for test purposes, should be 100000

        if (thresholdMetOrExceeded)
        {
            var message = $"FeatureToggle now has {totalDownloads} downloads";

            log.Info(message);

            await SendToFlow(message);            
        }        
    }
    catch (Exception ex)
    {
        log.Info(ex.ToString());
        await SendToFlow($"Error: {ex}");
    }
}

public static async Task SendToFlow(string message)
{
    const string flowUrl = "https://prod-16.australiasoutheast.logic.azure.com:443/workflows/[redacted]/triggers/manual/paths/invoke?api-version=2015-08-01-preview&sp=%2Ftriggers%2Fmanual%2Frun&sv=1.0&sig=[redacted]";

    using (var client = new HttpClient())
    {
        var content = new StringContent(message, Encoding.UTF8, "text/plain");
        
        await client.PostAsync(flowUrl, content);
    }
}

Manually running the function (with test threshold of 1 download) results in the following notification on from the Flow iOS app:

This demonstrates the nice thing about Azure Functions, namely that it’s easy to throw something together to solve a problem.

To jump-start your Azure Functions knowledge check out my Azure Function Triggers Quick Start Pluralsight course.

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In a previous article we saw how to get started with Azure Function Proxies. In addition to creating proxy URLs for HTTP functions in the same Function App, it is also possible to specifiy a backend URL that exists in a different Function App (or even a URL somewhere completely different). This essentially allows a single (HTTP) API for clients to use, that behind the scenes routes traffic to multiple Function Apps to enable  the decomposing of a single large Function App into multiple smaller ones. This also enables isolation between different Function Apps for deployment, testing, management, monitoring, etc..

For example, suppose we have an HTTP function defined in a Function App called myazurecloudfunctions that GETs a customer using an id querystring parameter; a request for customer 42 would look like the following (with function authorization enabled):

https://myazurecloudfunctions.azurewebsites.net/api/LoadCust?id=42&code=SKmM3Hr0IFEdJp9QnQ5ztu/mClYScUxjdjQw4TvSQ9OXm0xrgXQUpg==

In another Function App called dontcodetireddemos a proxy can be created to enable the following URL to be used instead:

https://dontcodetireddemos.azurewebsites.net/customer/42?code=SKmM3Hr0IFEdJp9QnQ5ztu/mClYScUxjdjQw4TvSQ9OXm0xrgXQUpg==

Notice in this proxied URL the id 42 is specified in the URL, not as a querystring parameter. This is another feature of Azure Function Proxies that  allows request parameters to be mapped from the proxy URL to the backend URL. In this example the proxy route template is “customer/{custId}” and the backend is set to “https://myazurecloudfunctions.azurewebsites.net/api/LoadCust?id={custId}” – notice the token {custId}.

The proxies.json configuration is:

{
    "proxies": {
        "CustomerGet": {
            "matchCondition": {
                "route": "customer/{custId}",
                "methods": [
                    "GET"
                ]
            },
            "backendUri": "https://myazurecloudfunctions.azurewebsites.net/api/LoadCust?id={custId}"
        }
    }
}

And a screenshot of the configuration:

To jump-start your Azure Functions knowledge check out my Azure Function Triggers Quick Start Pluralsight course.

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Azure functions allow the creation of HTTP-triggered code. A new feature to Functions is the ability to define proxies. (Note: at the time of writing this feature is in preview)

For example a function can be created that responds to HTTP GETs to retrieve a customer as the following code demonstrates:

using System.Net;

public class Customer 
{
    public int Id {get; set;}    
    public string Name {get; set;}
}

public static async Task<HttpResponseMessage> Run(HttpRequestMessage req, TraceWriter log)
{
    // error checking omitted

    string id = req.GetQueryNameValuePairs()
        .FirstOrDefault(q => string.Compare(q.Key, "id", true) == 0)
        .Value;

    return req.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, GetById(int.Parse(id)));
}

public static Customer GetById(int id)
{
    // simulate fetching a customer, e.g. from Table storage, db, etc.
    return new Customer
        {
            Id = id,
            Name = "Amrit"
        };
}

This function (called “GetCustomer”) could be available at the following URL (with function authorization enabled): https://dontcodetireddemos.azurewebsites.net/api/GetCustomer?id=42&code=rEQKsObGFDRCCiVuLhOnZ1Rdfn/XGgp5tfC1xHrhAqxvWqzHSQszCg==

Notice in the URL the name of the function is prefixed with “api” i.e. “api/GetCustomer”

Calling this URL would result in the following JSON being returned:

{
  "Id": 42,
  "Name": "Amrit"
}

Function proxies allow the “api” part to be replaced, for example to create a URL:  “https://dontcodetireddemos.azurewebsites.net/customer?id=42&code=rEQKsObGFDRCCiVuLhOnZ1Rdfn/XGgp5tfC1xHrhAqxvWqzHSQszCg==”

This proxy defines a name “CustomerGet”, a route template of “customer”, the actual URL to maps to “https://dontcodetireddemos.azurewebsites.net/api/GetCustomer”, and limited to only GET HTTP verbs.

If we had another function e.g. called PostCustomer we could also setup a POST proxy for that function:

Now we can issue both POSTs and GETs to the customer “resource” at: https://dontcodetireddemos.azurewebsites.net/customer (code key omitted).

Using Kudu for example, we can see a proxies.js file created in the wwwroot folder with the following contents:

{
    "proxies": {
        "CustomerGet": {
            "matchCondition": {
                "route": "customer",
                "methods": [
                    "GET"
                ]
            },
            "backendUri": "https://dontcodetireddemos.azurewebsites.net/api/GetCustomer"
        },
        "CustomerPost": {
            "matchCondition": {
                "route": "customer",
                "methods": [
                    "POST"
                ]
            },
            "backendUri": "https://dontcodetireddemos.azurewebsites.net/api/PostCustomer"
        }
    }
}

To jump-start your Azure Functions knowledge check out my Azure Function Triggers Quick Start Pluralsight course.

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In part 1 we crated a Flow to enable/disable the sending of push notifications and in part 2 we created an Azure Function to generate random phrases of positivity.

In this third and final part of this series we’ll go and create the second Flow that sends the push notifications to the phone.

This Flow will be automatically triggered every 15 minutes by using a Recurrence action followed by an action to get the blob content containing whether or not we should send a notification as the following screenshot shows:

Now that we have the blob content, we can examine it in an If condition. If the content of the blob is “enabled” we can continue the Flow:

If the condition is satisfied (“IF YES”) two actions are  performed: the first an HTTP GET to the Azure function, the second a push notification action that as content uses what was returned in the body of the HTTP GET. Notice in the HTTP GET, the URI includes the function authorization key as a query string parameter.

After saving the new Flow, we can head back to the Flow app and hit the button to enable “positivity pushes”:

Then every 15 minutes (until we turn them off by hitting the button again) we’ll get a positivity notification on the phone:

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In part 1 we created a Flow to toggle the sending of push notifications on and off by storing the configuration in Azure blob storage.

Now that we have a way of enabling/disabling notifications we can start to build the second Flow.

Before jumping into the Flow designer, we need to consider how to generate random positivity phrases and how to integrate this into the second Flow. One option to do this is to create a simple Azure Function with an HTTP trigger. The Flow can then use an HTTP action to issue a GET to the server that will return the string content to be sent via push notifications.

In the Azure Portal function editor a new function can be created with a HTTP trigger configured to GET only as the following screenshot shows:

Notice in the preceding screenshot the authorization level has bee set to “function”. This means the key needs to be provided when the function is called.

We can now write some code in the function code editor window as follows:

using System.Net;

public static HttpResponseMessage Run(HttpRequestMessage req, TraceWriter log)
{
    log.Info("C# HTTP trigger function processed a request.");

    string phrase = GeneratePhrase();

    return req.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, phrase);
}

public static string  GeneratePhrase()
{
    var phrases = new string[]
    {
        "Don't worry, be happy :)",
        "All is well",
        "Will it matter in 100 years?",
        "Change what you can, don't worry about what you can't"
    };

    var rnd = new Random();
    
    return phrases[rnd.Next(phrases.Length)];
}

Clicking the Run button will test the function and we can see the random phrases being returned with a 200 status as shown in the following screenshot:

In the final part of  this series we’ll go and create the second Flow that uses this function and the configuration value created in the previous article to actually send random positivity push notifications on a 15 minute schedule.

To jump-start your Azure Functions knowledge check out my Azure Function Triggers Quick Start Pluralsight course.

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Microsoft Flow allows the creation of serverless cloud workflows. It is similar to services such as If This Then That and has more of a business focus. It allows custom Flows to integrate with Azure services such as blob storage, the calling of arbitrary HTTP services, in addition to a whole host of services such as Facebook, Dropbox, OneDrive, etc.

In addition to executing in the cloud, Flows can create push notification to the Flow app on iOS and Android.

Once installed, the Flow app can be used to design/edit Flows, view Flow activity/recent executions, and initiate the execution of flows via “buttons” as shown in the following screenshot.

Tapping this software button will trigger the Flow in the cloud.

Example Scenario

To see buttons and push notification in action, imagine a scenario where sometimes you want cheering up with regular messages of positivity.

In this scenario, when enabled, you’ll get a push notification on your phone every 15 minutes with a random positive phase such as “Don't worry, be happy :)”.

To accomplish this two separate (but related) Flows can be created. The first Flow uses a button in the phone Flow app to toggle wether the “positivity pushes” will be sent. The second Flow is triggered automatically every 15 minutes and if enabled, sends a push notification.

Creating the Toggle Positivity Push Flow

This Flow will enable/disable the push notifications. To do this, a manual button trigger will be added to the Flow that will be pushed on the phone. To hold the enabled/disabled state, we can use the content of a blob in Azure blob storage. When triggered, the Flow will retrieve the content of the blob which can be the string “enabled” or “disabled”.

Once the blob content has been retrieved, its content can be examined in a If condition. If the content of the blob is currently “enabled” it will be updated to “disabled” and vice versa. Finally we’ll send a push notification to confirm the state.

Pressing the button in the app a couple of times results in the expected push notifications:

The blob content also gets toggled as expected:

In part 2 of this series we’ll start the process of creating another Flow to actually send the random positivity phrases to the phone.

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If you have some data in a web page but there is no API to get the same data, it’s possible to use (the often brittle and error prone) technique of screen scraping to read the values out of the HTML.

By leveraging Azure Functions, it’s trivial (depending on how horrendous the HTML is) to create a HTTP Azure Function that loads a web page, parses the HTML, and returns the data as JSON.

The fist step is to create an HTTP-triggered Azure Function:

To help with the parsing, we can use the HTML Agility Pack NuGet package. To add this to the function, create a project.json file and add the NuGet reference:

{
  "frameworks": {
    "net46":{
      "dependencies": {
        "HtmlAgilityPack": "1.4.9.5"
      }
    }
   }
}

Once this file is saved, the NuGet package will be installed and a using directive can be added: using HtmlAgilityPack;

Now we can download the required HTML page as a string, in the example below the archive page from Don’t Code Tired, use some LINQ to get the post titles, and return this as the HTTP response. Correctly selecting/parsing the required data from the HTML page is likely to be the most time-consuming part of the function creation.

The full function source code is as follows. Notice that there’s no error checking code to simplify the demo code. Screen scraping should usually be a last resort because of its very nature it can often break if the UI changes or unexpected data exists in the HTML. It also requires the whole page of HTML be downloaded which may raise performance concerns.

using System.Net;
using HtmlAgilityPack;

public static async Task<HttpResponseMessage> Run(HttpRequestMessage req, TraceWriter log)
{
    HttpClient client = new HttpClient();

    string html = await client.GetStringAsync("http://dontcodetired.com/blog/archive");    

    HtmlDocument doc = new HtmlDocument();
    doc.LoadHtml(html); 
    
    var postTitles = doc.DocumentNode
                        .Descendants("td")
                        .Where(x => x.Attributes.Contains("class") && x.Attributes["class"].Value.Contains("title"))
                        .Select(x => x.InnerText);

    return req.CreateResponse(HttpStatusCode.OK, postTitles);
}

We can now call the function via HTTP and get back a list of all Don’t Code Tired article titles as the following Postman screenshot shows:

To jump-start your Azure Functions knowledge check out my Azure Function Triggers Quick Start Pluralsight course.

You can start watching with a Pluralsight free trial.

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When creating an Azure Function triggered via HTTP, one way to authorize use of the function is to configure the HTTP function trigger to require the caller to provide a function key.

With the authorization set to Anonymous, as expected anyone can call it.

When set to Function Authorization, the caller needs to provide the function key either as a URL query string parameter or in a header.

The function key can be found by navigating to Manage tab as the following screenshot shows:

Once Function Authorization is enabled, if the client does not provide it correctly the function will return a 401 Unauthorized.

To supply the function key in the URL, the “code” query string parameter can be used, e.g. “https://myazurecloudfunctions.azurewebsites.net/api/SayHi?code=udXhf3pviSICFMtViW/pqmV/1Q5vLH5aMcRWXfD/q6NXk2VVxRlfYw==”.

Alternatively an “x-functions-key” header can be added containing the key as the following Postman screenshot shows:

To jump-start your Azure Functions knowledge check out my Azure Function Triggers Quick Start Pluralsight course.

You can start watching with a Pluralsight free trial.

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