Using Azure Mobile Services with Windows Phone
Windows 8 app building is great
With the new awesomeness that is Azure Mobile Services, building a cloud-connected application became much easier.
Now you just probably say “I wish it would have worked with other client platforms as well as Windows 8”
Guess what?
HTTP
The service is actually talking to the SDK via HTTP, and the Windows 8 SDK that is published along is a (very rich, awesomely done) wrapper around that HTTP API. Given that, I jumped ahead and implemented a (very poor, awfully done) SDKs for Windows Phone*.
Disclaimer #1
What you see here in this post and other related ones is 99.999% guaranteed to fail for you. It is a hack job that I put together in a few late-night hours, and it is *not* endorsed by the Mobile Services team. It is likely that if and when we do come up with an official WP SDK, it would be looking different. Very different. Even the HTTP api that I’m using here is likely to change by the time the service gets out of Preview mode.
codez
You can peak at some of the usages for the API in the following gist:
In follow up posts, I will cover the API more, and I will also be adding xml comments to the SDK to make it easier to use.
How to get it?
Head over to https://github.com/kenegozi/azure-mobile-csharp-sdk.
you could either clone the repo, or just navigate to /src/MobileServiceClient.cs , click on the ‘Raw’ button and save it in your project.
You’d need to have the latest Newtonsoft’s Json.NET referenced as well (if you don’t have it already).
A NuGet based delivery is in the works.
* I am also working on a similar SDK for Android. I’ll get to work on a iOS one as well once I get around to install Mountain Lion on my MBP
Disclaimer #2
Although I do work on the Mobile Services feature in Azure, the opinions, code, and sub-par grammar I voice on this blog is completely my own, and does not reflect my employer’s opinions, code, or grammar. This is *not* where you will get any official Azure announcements, you’d need to check out other places (I’d suggest http://WindowsAzure.com and Scott Guthrie’s blog as good starting points)
I will try it ASAP, thanks for the project :)
Hi Toni. Thanks for the comment - please do try this out and I'd appreciate any feedback you might have
Hi Ken,
I am using your SDK for Windows Phone 7.5 and noticed that Azure Mobile Services allows you to read only 50 records at a time. According to http://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/mobile/tutorials/add-paging-to-data-dotnet/, you can specify the page size to read more than 50 items/rows of data from a table. So how do I do this with your SDK or is this something that needs to be configured within Azure Mobile Service using the portal?
Just resolved my previous issue where I wanted to download more than 50 records, which is the max by default. You need to use Top(X) API where X is a number greater than 50 :)
HI Sandhip - sorry for missing your question and thanks a million for your input.
Yes your solution is the right one. I should probably update the comments on the methods to clarify this.
/ Hi i am very interested with you artlice,and i have a plan in the future i can be a good game programmer.now i just a simple web programmer who know about PHP.now i am try to learning game programming with C++.the idea of game maker software will also help me to create a pre programming game.Thank you for the information
Hi I am also having trouble with the 50 Items display, Can i get some more clarification on what the Top(x) API is and how/can be used for.
I solved it :) have to use the query when getting your table from Azure :)