Let's start our journey of understanding Azure serverless computing using Azure Functions by creating a basic backend Web API that responds to HTTP requests:
- Refer to https://azure.microsoft.com/en-in/free/?&wt.mc_id=AID607363_SEM_8y6Q27AS for creating a free Azure Account.
- Visit https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-create-function-app-portal to understand the step-by-step process of creating a function app, and https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-create-first-azure-function to create a function. While creating a function, a Storage Account is also created for storing all the files. Remember the name of the Storage Account, as it will be used later in the other chapters.
- Once you create the Function App, please go through the basic concepts of Triggers and Bindings which are the core concepts of how Azure Functions work. I highly recommend you to go through the https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/azure-functions/functions-triggers-bindings article before you proceed.
We will be using C# as the programming language throughout the book. Most of the functions are developed using Azure Functions V2 run-time. However, there are a few recipes which are not yet supported in V2 run-time which is mentioned in the respective recipe. Hopefully, by the time you are read this book, Microsoft will have made those features available for V2 run-time as well.