Creating a Hosted Service in Windows Azure IaaS Portal using REST APIs

I was working with the latest Windows Azure SDK 1.7 REST APIs for various operations related to services, roles and virtual machines.

Here I’m posting on how we can create a hosted service using REST APIs using the basic HTTPRequest POST methods.

First we need to know where we need to POST our request. The URL will be:

https://management.core.windows.net/<subscription-id>/services/hostedservices

You have to replace your Azure subscription id.

Next step is what we need to post in our request. So we’ll create our request body. It is an XML file which will have some of the properties related to the service which we want to host.

So I’ll call my xml file as CreateHostedService.xml and it will be like:

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>

<CreateHostedService xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/windowsazure">

  <ServiceName>service-name</ServiceName>

  <Label>base64-encoded-service-label</Label>

  <Description>description</Description>

  <Location>location</Location>

  <AffinityGroup>affinity-group</AffinityGroup>

  <ExtendedProperties>

    <ExtendedProperty>

      <Name>property-name</Name>

      <Value>property-value</Value>

    </ExtendedProperty>

  </ExtendedProperties>

</CreateHostedService> 

The mandatory properties here are Service Name, Label, Location or Affinity Group (either one of them).

Now we will have to use this XML in our C# code to POST the request to the URL specified above.

I’ll write a function called CreatedHostedService which will accept parameters like URL, SubscriptionId, and the location of XML file which needs to be posted.

private void CreateHostedService(string url, string subscriptionId, string xmlLocationPath)

{

                Uri uri = new Uri(String.Format(url, subscriptionId));

                XDocument document  = null;

                HttpWebRequest request =     

HttpWebRequest)HttpWebRequest.Create(txtRestCommand.Text);       

       request.Timeout = 50000;

       request.Headers.Add("x-ms-version", “2012-03-01”);

       request.ClientCertificates.Add(certificate);

       request.ContentType = "application/xml"; 

                If(xmlLocationPath != null || !string.IsNullorEmpty(xmlLocationPath)

                {

                                document =       XDocument.Load(xmlLocationPath);

              request.Method = "POST";

              StreamWriter writer = new StreamWriter(request.GetRequestStream());

              writer.Write(document);

              writer.Close();

       }

                HttpStatusCode statusCode;

       HttpWebResponse response;

       try

       {

              response = (HttpWebResponse)request.GetResponse();

       }

catch (WebException ex)

       {

                // GetResponse throws a WebException for 400 and 500 status codes

              response = (HttpWebResponse)ex.Response;

       }

       statusCode = response.StatusCode;  

       response.Close();     

}

We can customize this method. I’ve written a very basic example to explain this.

Please note that you should have a valid X509 certificate in your cert store as well a matching certificate uploaded on Azure portal for your subscription ID. You can retrieve the certificate using the thumbprint of the certificate.

The XML mentioned above is for MS Version “2012-03-01”.

For more detailed explanation of the properties specified in XML, please refer to:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/gg441304

Cheers

Ankit