Webber-Cross - Learning Windows Azure Mobile Services for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8

Learning Windows Azure Mobile Services for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 A short, fast and focused guide to enhance your Windows 8 applications by leveraging the power of Windows Azure Mobile Services Geoff Webber-Cross professional expertise distilled P U B L I S H I N G BIRMINGHAM - MUMBAI Learning Windows Azure Mobile Services for Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 Copyright 2014 Packt Publishing All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, without the prior written permission of the publisher, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles or reviews. Every effort has been made in the preparation of this book to ensure the accuracy of the information presented. However, the information contained in this book is sold without warranty, either express or implied. Neither the author, nor Packt Publishing, and its dealers and distributors will be held liable for any damages caused or alleged to be caused directly or indirectly by this book. Packt Publishing has endeavored to provide trademark information about all of the companies and products mentioned in this book by the appropriate use of capitals.

However, Packt Publishing cannot guarantee the accuracy of this information. First published: January 2014 Production Reference: 1090114 Published by Packt Publishing Ltd. Livery Place 35 Livery Street Birmingham B3 2PB, UK. ISBN 978-1-78217-192-8 www.packtpub.com Cover Image by Artie Ng (artherng@yahoo.com.au) Credits AuthorProject Coordinator Geoff Webber-Cross Michelle Quadros ReviewersProofreader Aidan Casey Mario Cecere Rafa Joca Peter Kirchner Indexer Rekha Nair Acquisition Editor Neha Nagwekar Graphics Yuvraj Mannari Grant Mizen Lead Technical EditorProduction Coordinator Nilesh Bambardekar Madhuja Chaudhari Technical EditorsCover Work Nilesh Bambardekar Kapil Hemnani Mrunmayee Patil Copy Editors Alisha Aranha Roshni Banerjee About the Author Geoff Webber-Cross has commercial and personal experience of developing Windows 8 and Windows Phone applications and using Azure for websites, mobile services, web services, and Windows services. He enjoys learning about new technologies and solving difficult software problems. I'd like to thank my wife for putting up with me tapping away on my laptop every night for months on end while writing this book.

About the Reviewers Aidan Casey has over 16 years' experience in the software industry. He lives in Ireland and works remotely as a solution architect for MYOB, Australia. He is a passionate member of the technical community and a regular presenter at events across Australia and Ireland. Outside of work, he enjoys running barefoot and solving world's problems over a pint of Guinness! Rafa Joca has over 10 years of web development experience. In the past, he was a lead developer responsible for creating high traffic websites (in PHP, Python, and JavaScript), game servers (in node.js), and Smart TV in-house framework (in JavaScript). Currently, he is the owner of Gluwera small company where he works as an independent consultant.

He helps his clients in topics related to web services and website development using node.js and the Windows Azure cloud. Also, he has over 13 years of experience in translating over 40 IT books about Flash, PHP, Java, JavaScript, agile, and SQL into Polish. Peter Kirchner has worked as a technical evangelist at Microsoft Germany since 2008. In this role, he speaks at conferences and writes articles that focus on cloud computing, with the goal to inspire new technologies. Also, he supports developers and administrators to develop and use the Microsoft platform. Before working at Microsoft, he gained experience while working in the area of SharePoint development and consulting.

As a student, he showed great interest in network technologies, security, and distributed systems, and he graduated with a diploma in Computer Science. I am very grateful to my employer for encouraging my passion for technology and my fianc Lena for her everlasting patience. www.PacktPub.com Support files, eBooks, discount offers, and more You might want to visit www.PacktPub.com for support files and downloads related to your book. Did you know that Packt offers eBook versions of every book published, with PDF and ePub files available? You can upgrade to the eBook version at www.PacktPub.com and as a print book customer, you are entitled to a discount on the eBook copy. Get in touch with us at service@packtpub.com for more details. At www.PacktPub.com, you can also read a collection of free technical articles, sign up for a range of free newsletters and receive exclusive discounts and offers on Packt books and eBooks.

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Windows Azure Mobile Services is a fantastic member of the Azure family, which allows mobile developers to quickly build web-connected applications and enhance user experience with push notifications. Using traditional web technology, we will need to think about creating databases and web services, deciding what security mechanisms to use; build tools to administer the data and services; and write backend services to interface with the different Push Notification Service providers we want to use. With Windows Azure Mobile Services, we can build model-first services without touching the database schema, get a fully managed and REST API for our data without writing a line of code, and modify the database API methods using scripts. Using scripts, we can also create API methods to access data, send push notifications, and make HTTP requests. This book aims to investigate all that Windows Azure Mobile Services has to offer with practical examples, which can be used in real applications. Also, it covers areas of application development to enhance user experience, help with store certification, and improve development efficiency.

I've created a simple game named TileTapper in C#/XAML for Windows 8 and Windows Phone to help illustrate use cases for all the service features and keep the book real! Preface The TileTapper game consists of a grid board seeded from a simple Boolean array of active or inactive tiles. When the app launches, it prompts the user to log in using the Windows Live connect authentication provider, downloads levels and current high score from our backend service, and then begins the game. The phone app game grid looks like the following screenshot: The user has to tap on all the tiles before the time runs out to complete the level. The score at the end of the game as well as high score are stored in the service, if needed. Levels are generated automatically using a scheduled script and push notifications are sent about new high scores achieved and new levels created.