1. Mobile Services
Data Storage
Radu Vunvulea
vunvulear@gmail.com
http://vunvulearadu.blogspot.com

2. Who am I?
{
“name” : “Radu Vunvulea,
“company” : “iQuest”,
“userType” : “enthusiastic”
“technologies” : [ “.NET”, “JS”, “Azure”, “Web”,
“Mobile”, “SL” ],
“w8experience” : [ “2 LoB App”, “1 Travel App”],
“blog” : “vunvulearadu.blogspot.com”,
“email” : ”vunvulear@gmail.com”,
“socialMedia” :
{
“twitter” : “@RaduVunvulea”,
“fb” : “radu.vunvulea”
}
}

3. Windows Azure Mobile Services
• This is the topic for today meeting

4. Agenda
• Features
• Pricing
• Account setup
• Account configuration for storing data
• What kind of data can be added
• Custom scripts
• Authentication
• Available API
• Demo

5. Features of Mobile Services
• User authentication
• Windows Live
• Facebook
• Google
• Twitter
• Store data in the cloud
• Windows Azure Storage
• Push notification infrastructure
• All the service is build in in Windows Azure

6. Pricing of Mobile Services
• Free package in the 90 days trial:
• Outbound traffic included 165MB
• Maximum 10 mobile services
• Reserved instance model:
• 3 dedicated servers (small instances, pay-as-you-go model)
• 100 mobile services
• Outbound data transfer will be paid
• Price available during preview can change in the final release

7. Pricing of Mobile Services
• Free package in the 90 days trial:
• Outbound traffic included 165MB
• Maximum 10 mobile services
• Reserved instance model:
• 3 dedicated servers (small instances, pay-as-you-go model)
• 100 mobile services
• Outbound data transfer will be paid
• Price available during preview can change in the final release

8. Setup your account
• Create a new mobile service from the “New/Mobile Service/Create”
• A unique name of the mobile service need to be created
• If we need a fresh database can be created or an existing one can be
used (if is in the same region)
• After creating the database, we can use it as a normal database
• The service can be active for one of the following platform:
• IOS
• Windows Phone 8
• Windows Store
• For each of the platform, after creating the mobile service, we can
download the project that contains all the configurations

9. Configure environment to store data
• From the management portal each service contains a tab named
“Data”
• We can managed all the tables that we have
• Create/Edit/Delete each table
• See the content of each table
• For each table, we can set the rights of each user of the given table:
• Anybody with the application key
• Everyone
• Only authenticate user
• Only scripts and admin
• This rights can be different for CRUD operations

10. What kind of data can be added?
• Any kind of serializable data
• Each entity have to be decorated with DataContract and
DataMember attributes
• It is recomanded to use the Name field of DataMember
[DataContract]
public class MyFoo
{
public int Id { get;set;}
[DataMember(Name = "Name"]
public string Name { get;set;}
}
The “Id” field don’t need to be decorated with DataMember attribute

11. Custom scripts
• Each CRUD operation can contain a custom script that is executed
on the server side
• This scripts can be for validation purposes or to add/set custom
fields
• Language: JavaScript
function insert(item, user, request) {
if (item.name == "Tom") {
request.respond(statusCodes.BAD_REQUEST, 'Tom name cannot be
added');
} else {
request.execute();
}
}
• When this kind of error appear, the client need to catch
“MobileServiceInvalidOperationException” exception

12. Custom scripts
• Each script can have helper functions
• Base action that need to be done by a script
• execute – execute the given action
• respond – send a response back to the client
• We cannot define global variable, each call is executed in a separate
request
• Some of the base modules are from node.js
• Example: we can make a request to another web-service to check data
function insert(item, user, request) {
var request = require('request');
request('http://myFoo.com/Services/validate', function(err, response, body) {
...
});
}

13. Custom scripts
Catch the exception on the client
try
{
await myTable.InsertAsync(item);
items.Add(item);
}
catch (MobileServiceInvalidOperationException e)
{
Trace.Write("Error: " + e.Reponse.Content);
}

14. Control user access to data
• Define custom scripts that check if the given user id has rights to
access his data
function insert(item, user, request) {
item.userId = user.userId;
request.execute();
}
function read(query, user, request) {
query.where({ userId: user.userId });
request.execute();
}
• We need to store the user id.
• Each user will have a unique user id
• The user id is generated automatically by the system
•  We cannot store this scripts in our source control system

15. How to work with data
• Define custom scripts that check if the given user id has rights to
access his data
App.MobileService.GetTable<MyEntity>()
• Before this we need to create a table with the same name
• Update: table.UpdateAsync(entity)
• Delete: table.DeleteAsync(entity)
• Insert: table.InsertAsync(entity)
• Fetch with data:
• Where
• Take
• Skip
• OrderBy
• Select
• ThenBy
• ToListAsync

16. Demo

18. THE END
Radu Vunvulea
vunvulear@gmail.com
http://vunvulearadu.blogspot.com