Three simple steps to create Azure table

Please read post at below link for recommended way to create table,

https://debugmode.net/2011/10/12/creating-azure-table-using-cloudtableclient-createtableifnotexist/

In this post I will show you three simple steps to create Azure Table.

Let us say you want to create Azure table called Employee with following columns

1. EmployeeID
2. EmployeeName
3. EmployeeSalary

Step 1: Create Entity class

First step is to create entity class representing employee.

Each row of azure table contains at least below columns

1. Row key
2. Partition Key
3. Time Stamp

And custom columns along with above columns. So Employee table will be having all together below columns

1. Row Key
2. Partition Key
3. Time Stamp
4. EmployeeID
5. EmployeeName
6. EmployeeSalary

To represent entity class, we need to create a class inheriting from class TableServiceEntity. EmployeeEntity class will be as below,

using System;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient;

namespace Test
{
public class EmployeeEntity : TableServiceEntity
{
public EmployeeEntity(string partitionKey, string rowKey)
: base (partitionKey,rowKey )
{

}
public EmployeeEntity()
: base()
{
PartitionKey = "test";
RowKey = String.Empty;
}

public string EmployeeID { get; set; }
public string EmployeeName { get; set; }
public int EmployeeSalaray { get; set; }
}
}

 

There is couple of points worth discussing about above class.

1. It inherits from TableServiceEntity class
2. It is having two constructors
3. Passing rowkey and partitionkey as string value to base constructor
4. Custom columns are as the public property of the class.

Step 2: Create Data Context class

Once Entity class is in place, we need to create DataContext class. This class will be used to create the table.

using System;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure;
using System.Linq;

namespace Test
{
public class EmployeeContext : TableServiceContext
{
internal EmployeeContext(string baseAddress, StorageCredentials credentials)
:
base(baseAddress, credentials)
{

}

internal const string EmployeeTableName = "Employee";
public IQueryable<EmployeeEntity> Employee
{
get
{
return this.CreateQuery<EmployeeEntity>(EmployeeTableName);
}
}
}
}

There are couples of points worth discussing about above code

• It inherits from TableServiceContext class
• In constructor we are passing credentials
• In constructor we are passing base address to create the table.

• Table name is given inline in the code as below; Employee is name of the table we want to create.

• We need to add IQueyable property to create query.

Step 3: Creating Table

To create table we need a very simple code.

1. Create the account. In below code DataConnectionString is name of the connection string. This could be pointing to local storage or Azure Tables.
2. We are creating table from Data Model. Passing EmployeeContext class as parameter.

using System;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.StorageClient;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure;
using System.Linq;
using Microsoft.WindowsAzure.ServiceRuntime;

namespace Test
{
public class CrudClass
{
public class CrudClass
{
public void CreateTable()
{
CloudStorageAccount account = CloudStorageAccount.Parse(RoleEnvironment.GetConfigurationSettingValue("DataConnectionString"));
CloudTableClient.CreateTablesFromModel(typeof(EmployeeContext
), account.TableEndpoint.AbsoluteUri, account.Credentials);

}

}
}

 

When you call CreateTable() method of CrudClass , it will create Employee table for you in Azure table.

I hope this post was useful. Thanks for reading

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