Azure QuickStarts: In Visual Studio and on the web

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Whether you are a beginner or an experienced developer, learning a brand new API can be challenging. Comprehensive documentation is obviously important, but sometimes that can make the new API seem even more daunting by surfacing everything the API can do when you’re not sure how to approach the basics.

We’ve found that one of the best ways to help people get productive with new APIs is through simple sample applications which demonstrate just the most critical scenarios, showing the correct implementation patterns with the smallest possible overhead. The samples help you understand what the API can do, allow you to debug through the code to understand how it works, and allow you to copy and paste the code into your own solutions with confidence.

Here at Microsoft we call these kinds of samples “QuickStarts”, and we’ve included them in a number of products of the years, including many deliverables from the patterns & practices team. We’ve also included a number of QuickStarts with the Azure SDK for a few months now, but until now they may have been difficult to discover and use.

With the new Azure SDK 2.6 for .NET, we’ve made a few key changes to provide a better experience for the Azure QuickStarts. First, there are now two ways of finding them. If you’re using Visual Studio and have the Azure SDK installed, you can see find the QuickStarts by choosing File | New Project, expanding the Templates \ Visual C# \ Cloud \ QuickStarts node and selecting the technology you’re interested in:

VSQuickStarts

If you’re not currently using Visual Studio, you can find the exact same samples in the MSDN Code Gallery sample pack. On this site you can view the source code in each sample, download an individual sample or the full pack, as well as rate the samples and ask questions.

In addition to providing more ways to find the samples, we’ve been working to improve both the quality and quantity. Each sample now comes with improved documentation as well as error handling to anticipate common mistakes such as forgetting to update a connection string. We’ve also added new samples for technologies like Azure Active Directory and Azure Files, and we’ll keep adding more over time.

If you have any questions or feedback on the Azure QuickStarts you can provide a comment below or use the Q&A tab present on each sample in the Code Gallery.