Microsoft released Azure Blob storage client library v12 for .NET which is recommended library to work with Azure blob storage going forward. This new SDK is refactored into specific nuget packages based on resources. For e.g. if you want to work with Azure Blob Storage then use Microsoft.Azure.Storage.Blob .Net Client package. You can install this via dotnet add package Microsoft.Azure.Storage.Blob command. This package has differences in API signatures as compared to earlier legacy v11 SDK.

To read serialized string content from blob, there is no direct API available for e.g. reading CSV content line by line. Instead of serialized string, the API will return response content Memory Stream. You can use StreamReader Api to read the stream at ones or line by line easily with ReadLineAsync() or ReadToEndAsync() api from StreamReader class from System.IO namespace.

The Microsoft.Azure.Stroage.Blob SDK provides the BlobServiceClient which allows you to manipulate Azure Storage service resources and blob containers.

BlobServiceClient blobServiceClient = new BlobServiceClient("connectionString");

Once you get reference of BlobServiceClient, you can call GetBlobContainerClient() api from blob service client object to get the BlobContainerClient which allows you to manipulate Azure Storage containers and their blobs.

BlobContainerClient containerClient = blobServiceClient.GetBlobContainerClient("containerName");

After you get BloblContainerClient, you can get reference of specific blob by GetBlobClient() Api which create a new BlobClient object by appending blobName to the end of Uri.

BlobClient blobClient = containerClient.GetBlobClient("blobName.csv");

You can later call DownloadAsyn() method on BlobClient to download the blob Response Stream, which you can read by StreamReader.ReadLineAsyn() api.

var response = await blobClient.DownloadAsync();
  using (var streamReader= new StreamReader(response.Value.Content))
  {
    while (!streamReader.EndOfStream)
    {
      var line = await streamReader.ReadLineAsync();
      Console.WriteLine(line);
    }
  }

Complete source code will be as below –

BlobServiceClient blobServiceClient = new BlobServiceClient("connectionString");
BlobContainerClient containerClient = blobServiceClient.GetBlobContainerClient("containerName");
BlobClient blobClient = containerClient.GetBlobClient("blobName.csv");
if (await blobClient.ExistsAsync())
{
  var response = await blobClient.DownloadAsync();
  using (var streamReader= new StreamReader(response.Value.Content))
  {
    while (!streamReader.EndOfStream)
    {
      var line = await streamReader.ReadLineAsync();
      Console.WriteLine(line);
    }
  }
}

Hopefully, this article helped you figure out how to get this working.

The post Reading string content from Azure Blob Storage using CSharp (C#) appeared first on Pritam's Blog.

With ASP.Net Core Microsoft enabled us to run these apps on non-Windows OS platforms like Linux, MacOs. If we explore the Azure App Services Pricing and choose Linux OS, then they are almost 30-60% cheaper than the Windows OS pricing based on selected Tiers (Basic/Standard/Premium etc.).

For e.g. Azure App Service with Windows OS with Basic plan charges 55$ per month.

Whereas, if you choose Linux OS with Basic plan which charges 13$ (Promotional), Standard plan is slight lesser i.e. 4$ less, Premium Plan is almost 50% lesser than Windows OS.

Cost plays very crucial roles for any Organization, specially when it is startup where every single penny worth to save. I have worked with several startups and had first hand experience on how cost impacts with time. Specially when startups joins Microsoft BizSpark kind of programs where they get free unlimited credits for certain period, which gives us opportunity to focus on business/technology and not worry on infrastructure cost. But at the end of program they end up using over provisioned resources which lands them into huge monthly bills.

We should do proper capacity planning on costing by evaluating alternatives which will save money.

We may not get all the features of Windows OS hosting vs hosting on Linux OS, but there are always workarounds. From feature parity we can achieve everything regardless of what will be our host OS.

We should be always careful when we choose the resources even though they are free.

You can read more on Azure App Service on Linux.

The post Deploy ASP.NET Core apps to Azure App Service with lesser cost appeared first on Pritam's Blog.