Tutorial: how to add a cloud-based backend service to a Windows Store app using Windows Azure Mobile Services

This tutorial shows you how to add a cloud-based backend service to a Windows Store app using Windows Azure Mobile Services.

If you prefer to watch a video, the clip to the right follows the same steps as this tutorial. In the video, Scott Guthrie provides an introduction to Mobile Services and walks through creating your first mobile service and connecting to it from a Windows Store app.

In this tutorial, you will create both a new mobile service and a simple To do list app that stores app data in the new mobile service.

A screenshot from the completed app is below:

Completing this tutorial is a prerequisite for all other Mobile Services tutorials for Windows Store apps.

Note

To complete this tutorial, you need a Windows Azure account that has the Windows Azure Mobile Services feature enabled.

• If you don't have an account, you can create a free trial account in just a couple of minutes. For details, see Windows Azure Free Trial.
• If you have an existing account but need to enable the Windows Azure Mobile Services preview, see Enable Windows Azure preview features.

Create a new mobile service

Follow these steps to create a new mobile service.

1. Log into the Management Portal.

2. At the bottom of the navigation pane, click +NEW.

3. Expand Mobile Service, then click Create.

   This displays the New Mobile Service dialog.

4. In the Create a mobile service page, type a subdomain name for the new mobile service in the URL textbox and wait for name verification. Once name verification completes, click the right arrow button to go to the next page.

   This displays the Specify database settings page.

   Note

   As part of this tutorial, you create a new SQL Database instance and server. You can reuse this new database and administer it as you would any other SQL Database instance. If you already have a database in the same region as the new mobile service, you can instead choose Use existing Database and then select that database. The use of a database in a different region is not recommended because of additional bandwidth costs and higher latencies.

5. In Name, type the name of the new database, then type Login name, which is the administrator login name for the new SQL Database server, type and confirm the password, and click the check button to complete the process.

   Note

   When the password that you supply does not meet the minimum requirements or when there is a mismatch, a warning is displayed.
   We recommend that you make a note of the administrator login name and password that you specify; you will need this information to reuse the SQL Database instance or the server in the future.

You have now created a new mobile service that can be used by your mobile apps.

Create a new Windows Store app

Once you have created your mobile service, you can follow an easy quickstart in the Management Portal to either create a new app or modify an existing app to connect to your mobile service.

In this section you will create a new Windows Store app that is connected to your mobile service.

1. In the Management Portal, click Mobile Services, and then click the mobile service that you just created.

2. In the quickstart tab, click Windows under Choose platform and expand Create a new Windows Store app.

   This displays the three easy steps to create a Windows Store app connected to your mobile service.

3. If you haven't already done so, download and install Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8 and the Mobile Services SDK on your local computer or virtual machine.

4. Click Create TodoItems table to create a table to store app data.

5. Under Download and run application, select a language for your app, then click Download.

   This downloads the project for the sample To do list application that is connected to your mobile service. Save the compressed project file to your local computer, and make a note of where you save it.

Run your Windows app

The final stage of this tutorial is to build and run your new app.

1. Browse to the location where you saved the compressed project files, expand the files on your computer, and open the solution file in Visual Studio 2012 Express for Windows 8.

2. Press the F5 key to rebuild the project and start the app.

3. In the app, type meaningful text, such as Complete the tutorial, in Insert a TodoItem, and then click Save.

   This sends a POST request to the new mobile service hosted in Windows Azure. Data from the request is inserted into the TodoItem table. Items stored in the table are returned by the mobile service, and the data is displayed in the second column in the app.

   Note

   You can review the code that accesses your mobile service to query and insert data, which is found in either the MainPage.xaml.cs file (C#/XAML project) or the default.js (JavaScript/HTML project) file.

4. Back in the Management Portal, click the Data tab and then click the TodoItems table.

   This lets you browse the data inserted by the app into the table.

Next Steps

Now that you have completed the quickstart, learn how to perform additional important tasks in Mobile Services:

• Get started with data ( C# / JavaScript )
  Learn more about storing and querying data using Mobile Services.

• Get started with authentication ( C# / JavaScript )
  Learn how to authenticate users of your app with an identity provider.

• Get started with push notifications ( C# / JavaScript )
  Learn how to send a very basic push notification to your app.

• Watch Building Cross Platform Mobile Solutions Using Azure Mobile Solutions workshop https://bit.ly/16b6cZ2 or https://bit.ly/ZrM7ID

The Source: https://bit.ly/14vtm8Y