1. Building Azure Mobile Apps
Microsoft Virtual Academy
Header
Mastering Azure App Service, Part 4
Building Azure Mobile Apps
Scott J. Peterson
Produced by

2. Azure Mobile Apps
Azure Mobile Apps make it easy to build cross-platform and native apps for iOS, Android, Windows, and Mac operating systems, seamlessly store data, authenticate users, and send push notifications.

3. Supported Languages & Tools
Mobile Apps can be developed in both C# and Node.js and consuming apps can be developed in most supported languages on most platforms. Mobile App development is built into Visual Studio 2015 for supported languages and additional “in browser” tools are available in various forms.

4. The Agenda Mobile App Concepts Getting Started Developing Mobile Apps
Authentication & Authorization
Cross Platform Development
Push Notifications
Next Steps
Tips & Tricks

5. Mobile App Concepts Create or upgrade existing Mobile Apps
Azure Mobile App Services:
Connect to on-premises data
Robust authentication
Leverage offline scenarios
Broadcast push notifications

6. Mobile App Concepts Backend exposed as a “enhanced” Azure Web App
Mobile App services easily accessible via REST API concepts for client apps
Single-source for:
Storage
Authentication
Notification

7. The Azure Mobile App Environment
Mobile Apps are part of the new “Web + Mobile” Suite
Mobile App management is not available via the “Classic” Azure Portal
Create and manage Mobile Apps in:
Azure Management Portal
Visual Studio 2015
Other tools of your choice

8. Getting Started

9. Developing Mobile Apps
Developing Azure Mobile Apps with Visual Studio is almost exactly like developing MVC-based or Web API solutions with Visual Studio, except that the Azure App Service can controls integration, authentication, and other cumbersome tasks.

10. Common Mobile App Concepts
Client SDK or Server SDK
Data and Synchronization
Authentication
Push Notifications
Connected Services
Scaling & Availability

11. Developing Mobile Apps

12. Authentication & Authorization
Authentication types (or “flows”)
Server flow
Client flow
Mobile clients don’t (typically) redirect
Leverage App Service authentication settings
Leverage Mobile App authentication flows
Only the Mobile App clients offer easy “login” methods

13. Authentication & Authorization

14. Cross Platform Development
Nothing changes in your Azure Mobile App “backend”
Almost all client-side code can be shared
Project for other target platforms can be added or removed as needed
Xamarin is built into Visual Studio 2015
Azure App Services manage keys and stores

15. Cross Platform Development

16. Push Notifications
Every mobile platform needs push notifications sent in their own specific way
Handling registration, queues, device availability, failover, scaling is totally unreasonable
Azure Mobile App Notification Hubs handle everything
Apps, App Identifiers, Packages must be registered and “known” by the platform and the Mobile App Notification Hub
Tagged, targeted, and broadcasted communications
Absolutely the best way to communicate across devices and platforms

17. Push Notifications

18. Next Steps
Dig deeper into Offline Data Synchronization and Local Stores
Start migrating existing Mobile Services to Azure Mobile Apps.
Start evaluating methods in your existing Mobile Apps that should be exposed as Azure API methods to integrate into your Mobile Apps.
Start evaluating methods that can be reused as functions and create Azure Functions and integrate.
Remote debugging is your best friend, get comfortable with it.
Create Azure Mobile Apps and just test and alter the code, and then delete your projects and services.
Evaluate your Azure Resource and Storage configurations.

19. Building Azure Mobile Apps
Scott J. Peterson, MCSD, MCPSB, MCT
Senior Enterprise Architect & Developer

20. Tips & Tricks
The new Azure Portal seems to respond better when using Firefox. Internet Explorer seems to respond better than Edge.
When you first start developing Azure Mobile Apps give your API apps “junky” names. This makes it easier to go out and delete services afterwards so you don’t get charged for them.
Wait to add Azure Mobile Authentication until the end of the development cycle if possible, to avoid complexity.
Sometimes if you delete and recreate a Mobile app with the same name there is a 30 minute (or so) delay before Azure gets “un-confused”. It may think the service you just created is the old service. Be patient, Azure will figure it out.
You can always call the “/.auth/me” endpoint from a backend HTTP request to grab token and other appropriate information. Try it out!