Webhooks with Azure Functions - Live 360 Conference
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Azure Functions make it easy to create and host webhook interfaces without maintaining a server. You can quickly setup an endpoint to receive data and act on it. Being able to ingest, process, and respond to data from a variety of sources without building out an infrastructure gives you time to focus on building functionality. In this presentation, Nick Zimmerman, Sr. Site Reliability Engineer at SparkPost, will show you how to setup an Azure Function, accept webhook data, process that data with C#, and integrate that data into an application in real time.
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Webhooks with Azure Functions - Live 360 Conference
- 1. 1@SparkPost Serverless is not Just for Automats Azure Functions Webhook Interface November 15, 2017
- 2. 2@SparkPost A Bit About Me Who is this Nick Zimmerman person?
- 3. 3@SparkPost Nick Zimmerman Interesting Bits • Discovered computers and punch cards at age 4 • Wrote first code at age 11 in BASIC on a TI99/4A • я немного говорю по русски
- 4. 4@SparkPost Azure Functions Stealing Server Jobs Since 2016
- 5. 5@SparkPost Azure Functions Pluses • No infrastructure to maintain • Scalable - Infrequent workloads - Hard to predict demand • Quick to create, deploy, and update via a single point of deployment • Developer friendly - Easy learning curve for developers - Interact with other Azure services such as CosmosDB, SQL database, etc. - C#, JavaScript, F#, Python, PowerShell, Bash are all supported languages Minuses • Expense • Hard to introspect and debug complex processes • Not suitable for long running processes
- 6. 6@SparkPost Webhooks It’s All About the Events
- 7. 7@SparkPost Webhooks Event Driven Interactions • Standard JSON data • HTTP callback for event notification • Event Driven Pattern Popular Products with Webhooks • SparkPost • Slack • Visual Studio Team Services • Office 365 • Facebook • PayPal • Salesforce
- 8. 8@SparkPost Azure Function Console Not a Consolation Prize
- 9. 9@SparkPost Azure Function Console Overview Benefits • No need to have Visual Studio. • Download Visual Studio Project • Easier to understand all the discreet bits - Build, Integrate, Manage, Monitor - Quickstart templates • Easy testing interface • Immediate deployment Risks and Negatives • Immediate deployment. • Editor is not rich and helpful IDE. • Easy to delete things without recovery path
- 10. 10@SparkPost Create the Function 1. Select New, Compute, then Function App 2. Enter a name 3. Click Create button Pro Tip – Tick the box!
- 11. 11@SparkPost A Wealth of Goodies
- 12. 12@SparkPost Control All the Things!
- 14. 14@SparkPost Azure Functions with Visual Studio Developer Paradise (Mai Tai’s Not Included)
- 15. 15@SparkPost Azure Functions with Visual Studio Benefits • The same solid Visual Studio experience • Local testing and debugging - Step through code - Avoid deploying untested code • Source control integration • Deploy from Visual Studio directly to Azure Risks • Relies on good developer habits • Failure to account the for all the discreet parameters
- 16. 16@SparkPost Create a New Solution
- 17. 17@SparkPost Create a New Function
- 20. 20@SparkPost Do Not Forsake the Console Test is Bash for Windows (curl), Postman, or your browser.
- 21. 21@SparkPost Let’s Light this Candle
- 25. 25@SparkPost Resources for Continued Fun The Code Must Go On
Editor's Notes
- Welcome to Azure Functions Webhook Interface Serverless infrastructure is all the rage lately. It represents a paradigm shift that is on the same magnitude as the move from on-premises data center to the cloud. The shift to the cloud allowed us to stop worrying about physical hardware. This quickly extended to providing services for unwieldy things like databases, web servers, and queuing systems. Now the concepts have been extended to individual functions through services like Azure Functions. At the end of this presentation, you will be prepared to venture forth and start building serverless functions.
- Thank you all for coming by, and before we dive into the fun stuff, let me tell you a bit about me.
- In short, I am a lifelong computer geek. I have been fiddling about with computers for most of my life thanks to my father. These days, I get paid to be a Senior Site Reliability Engineer for SparkPost. I really enjoy the challenges of building, monitoring, and maintaining the complex infrastructure that provides our customers with a great experience and spectacular results.
- One of the challenges facing IT organizations is controlling server cost. Amazon helped address this issue by starting AWS to monetize the excess capacity. That still meant virtual machines and the overhead that is associated with managing them does not drop significantly.
- Maintaining IT infrastructure is hard and expensive. Keeping things patched, running, spare parts, and preventing bad actors all take resources. Most organizations are not able to hire specialist in all of these fields, so there is some amount of compromise in where resources are allocated. Accommodating bursts of activity and growth mean allocating a certain amount of resources to stand idle just waiting to be needed. This is largely a guessing game that everyone hopes they have made all the right assumptions about. Complex deployment systems are often the source of pain and suffering for many organizations. Trying to orchestrate the deployment of servers, operating systems, needed dependencies, and custom software is a hard problem. There are a plethora of tools and techniques to accomplish this management, but the advent of simple to use serverless functions and cloud services make things much simpler. You get simpler deployments and have to worry much less about the underlying bits and pieces, and instead you get to focus on your core business and competencies. There are some negatives to serverless architecture. Care must be taken in construction, as long running functions can become extremely expensive. It can also become difficult to introspect and debug complex processes. It is incumbent that developers think through how these complex systems will be instrumented to insure there is transparency into the systems. A negative that often causes great expense is the long running process. Developers need to rethink the way things are architected when dealing with serverless functions. Short, quick executing functions are the best. Breaking apart complex processes is actually more cost effective and efficient than having a large, long running process. This is a bit counter-intuitive to developers not experienced with scalable enterprise architectures.
- What are these webhooks you speak of and what can they do for me?
- In simplest terms, webhooks are event driven interactions. Many products support webhooks. By employing webhooks, you can create rich, complex systems that provide meaningful interactions for users. Webhooks are also useful for monitoring activity, creating notifications, and aggregating data for analysis.
- In some cases, the console for cloud services is in some cases an afterthought leaving a lot to be desired. This is not the case for the Azure console.
- The Azure Function App console is extremely useful, and something every developer should spend some time studying. It is not just an interface, but it is a great guide to how the bits of Azure interact. Many of the deep details of what can be done within Azure can be unearthed inside of the console. One of the best things is that you can develop new functions without having Visual Studio, and if you do have Visual Studio, you can download the created function as a solution file. By working in the console, you can get a better understanding of all the discreet things that can be done with Azure Functions, and the quickstart templates make it very easy to get a basic framework that you just need to flesh out with the details of your use-case. The test interface makes it easy to test a function and see that it is working properly. When you update a function in the console, it is immediately deployed. No need to build any sort of deployment infrastructure. This can be very risky though since if you make a mistake in the console, it has immediate impact. It is challenging to know when you have made a mistake since there is not the rich and helpful IDE experience that you get when working with Visual Studio. Once you delete something in the Azure Function console, it is gone forever. There is no backup or undo.
- Let’s dive right in and build our first function. I like to learn things the first time in the console to help me understand the requirements and general structure. I tend to be quite visual, so seeing how the pieces relate following the interface is very helpful to me. Most of what is listed here in the Create dialog is not critical to creating a function. You really just need to choose a name. Everything else can be automatic. Once you get the basics down, you can dive into the fine details of Resource Groups, Hosting Plans, and Storage. For now, just know that a Resource Group is a way to provision, manage, control access, and monitor a group of resources. Compartmentalization of resources helps control costs, assist in accounting, and limit noisy neighbor effects. The Pin to dashboard check box is unchecked by default. It is a good idea to tick the box to get your newly created function to show up on the dashboard. Once you are more familiar with the interface, you can adjust your dashboard to suit your needs, but to start, I like to easily be able to find what I just created without rooting around for it.
- Once creation is completed, you can see all the details of the Function App, and you can manage your Function App. A few things to take note of here. The details of the app, including the access URL is shown. Downloading the app content will get you a Visual Studio solution file, and you can add Functions, Proxies, and Slots. Of special note are the Function App settings and the Application settings.
- These links will open tabs for their respective activities. Within each, you can control many of the fine details of the Function App. You can change the underlying platform for 32-bit or 64-bit, tweak access controls, manage deployment options, explore resources, and even access a development console. The Function app settings are important if you want to set some limitations on the usage of the app or avoid accidental updates.
- That lays the foundation, but the real magic happens when you click the plus next to the Functions in the console and create the actual code that is doing the work. Just give the function a name, and start to lay out the code within the framework selected. The construction interface gives you an editor, a log, and click on the side tab to pop out the test pane, if it happens to be collapsed. The coding itself is straightforward C# just like Visual Studio. Note that in the testing pane you can create complex query strings, add headers, and edit your request body. You can also grab the URL of the function if you want to test with an external tool.
- Now that we have a taste of things in the console, let’s move on from the common experience to the extraordinary.
- Once you have added the Azure Workload to your installation of Visual Studio 2017, you have access to the full power of an operational cloud! You get the familiar Visual Studio experience while able to local test and debug your Function Apps. As a good practice, you can put your Azure solutions in the source control of your choice. Unlike tradition deployment situations where you need Team Services or some other deployment method, you can deploy directly from Visual Studio to an Azure account, assuming you have the account info and deployment permissions. This leads to the same risk of the console that you could deploy untested code directly to production. The other thing that is less obvious in Visual Studio is all the discreet parameters that you can control with Azure Function Apps. You can still access all of these things and control them, but it takes a little more effort to make the tweaks in Visual Studio. A little exploring and time, and it is completely manageable through the host.json file.
- When creating a new project, you should see the option for Visual C#, Cloud, and Azure Functions. Give it a name, and click OK. Just like creating any other Visual Studio solution. This is where there is a slight disconnect here, as this is what the console calls a Function App. Small difference, but it can be a little confusing to some.
- Right click the project folder, select New Item, Azure Function. This is equivalent to clicking the plus in the console and creating a new function within your Function app.
- Just like the console, now we have a template for the function. Just start writing your code. When you are ready to test, press F5, and you will be able to debug locally just like you would other Visual Studio projects.
- The first time you try to debug an Azure Function locally, you will be prompted to install the Azure CLI. After that, it will go directly into starting the debugging console.
- The debugger console shows every request that is triggered. This can be useful for validating behavior and insure the function is behaving as expected. You can test the function through the URL in the debugging console using your favorite way to interact with a REST API. Personally, I prefer using curl through Bash for most things, and when things get complex, Postman works very well for interacting with RESTful endpoints.
- Right click the project node in Solution Explorer, choose Publish, and you will see this screen. A little tip here is that even if you did not download an existing solution from the console, you can update an existing function through Visual Studio.
- Wait for the creation to finish, and you will see the publish details in Visual Studio. You get essentially the same details as you get in the console.
- Assuming you have connected your Visual Studio to your Azure account, you just need to create the new function. Name the app, choose the description, the resource group, and click Create. It is that simple. Note that you can have multiple accounts attached, for example if you separate development and production.