How to create Azure Function with Sql Output Binding?

Description:

                        Here we are going to see how to make an Azure Function app with SQL output Binding by practical

Prerequisite:

•  Azure Subscription
•  Visual Studio 2022
•  Knowledge of CRUD using C# with API is enough
•  

Azure Functions are a serverless solution that allows you to write less code, maintain less infrastructure, and save on costs. Azure SQL bindings for Azure Functions make integrating your SQL data with serverless applications easier than ever. Sql Outout Binding will help to SAVE data to database More information we can get from here Hope this is enough, let’s move into the practical session

Before going to main section, first we should have an Azure Sql Database which I have already created, if you wana know about it please use this link to learn, then after I have created a table below is the structure of that

CREATE TABLE [dbo].[tblEmployee](

          [employeeid] [int] IDENTITY(1,1) NOT NULL,

          [firstName] [varchar](50) NOT NULL,

          [lastName] [varchar](50) NULL,

          [dob] [date] NOT NULL,

          [sex] [char](10) NOT NULL,

 CONSTRAINT [PK_tblEmployee] PRIMARY KEY CLUSTERED

(

          [employeeid] ASC

)WITH (STATISTICS_NORECOMPUTE = OFF, IGNORE_DUP_KEY = OFF, OPTIMIZE_FOR_SEQUENTIAL_KEY = OFF) ON [PRIMARY]

) ON [PRIMARY]

GO

 

How to create Azure Functions from VS 2022?

1)   Open Visual Studio and choose Azure Functions by simply typing function from the search menu and click Next

 

 

2)   Type project name DemoFunctionAppSqlOutputBind and your preferred location then click Next

3)   Select .Net 6.0 LTS Function as SQL output binding Connection String as DbConnectionString table as [dbo].[tblEmployee]  then click Next

4)   Once the project is created then VS2022 automatically open to configure screens to connect the Sql DB, from there choose Azure SQL Database

5)   One more time it will force you to Auth so, please do it with azure subscription account then after it will list down the existing DB from there we are going to choose jtestdb click Next

6)   On the next screen Database connection string name as DbConnectionString Database connection user name as adminj password {Your PWD} Connection string value is automatically taken from our earlier screen selection so, let it be then click Next

 

7)   At the end we could see the changes going to make in our project by category so, just click Finish 

8)   Then after made some minor code changes they are

a)   Create a folder called Models from the solution explorer

b)   Under Models create a class called Employee it structure like below

public class Employee

    {

        public string firstName { get; set; }

        public string lastName { get; set; }

        public DateTime dob { get; set; }

        public string sex { get; set; }

             }

Then from Function1 code changed like below

9)   Next we are going to publish this simple project into Azure Portal so, right click the project from Solution Explorer and click Publish

a)   There choose Azure and click Next

b)   Then choose Azure Function App (Windows) and click Next 

c)   From the next window select the Azure service which we have created already and click Finish

d)   Now the configurations are completed; from the main screen Publish button then after it will take few seconds to deploy so, wait and see the logs in output window, when its completed then we could see the message as Function app is ready

10)       Next, open your browser and login to www.azure.com then go to our Function app, in our case mine is azureSqlOutputbinding open it, in the left pane click Functions like below

11)       From there click the deployed Function app which we did from VS2022

12)       Then from the left page click Code + Test

13)       Then click Test/Run from the top panel

14)       Then from the right side a vertical pop up appears there choose HTTP as POST  then at the BODY paste below JSON

{

   

    "firstName" : "Jeyaseelan",

    "lastName" : "Jeyabaskaran",

    "dob" : "1990-12-25",

    "sex" : "male"

}

 

15)       Then after click Run button, that will use our azure function to post data to tblEmployee table

16)       That’s in, in just 2 seconds we have seen the result code as 200 like below 

17)       To cross check, I have connected the azure db from local SSM and seen that the data is inserted 

18)       The same POST operation I have tried from Postman as well with service key like below and confirmed that the data is successfully posted to Azure Sql DB

 

 

Conclusion

 

                          It seems that we have to do multiple steps but, Azure SQL Creation, Azure Function app creation, Azure Function app configurations in VS2022 are just one time work. So, we did the POST operation in few line of code and I no need of any server also the performance is fast. I hope this helped you to improve your app development speed.