Complete Windows Azure Storage Samples (REST and .NET side-by-side)

I’ve posted new samples for Windows Azure Storage on CodePlex at http://azurestoragesamples.codeplex.com/. These samples are complete—they show every single operation you can perform in the Windows Azure Storage API against blob, queue, and table storage. In addition, there is both a REST implementation and a .NET StorageClient implementation with identical functionality that you can compare side-by-side.

I decided to put these samples up for 3 reasons:

1. First of all, they're part of the code samples for my upcoming book series, The Windows Azure Handbook. Putting them out early gives me an opportunity to get some feedback and refine them.

2. Second, although there is a lot of good online information and blogging about Windows Azure Storage, there doesn't seem to be a single sample you can download that does "everything". The Windows Azure SDK used to have a sample like this but no longer does.

3. Third, I wanted to give complete side-by-side implementations of the REST and .NET StorageClient library approaches. Often developers starting with Windows Azure Storage are undecided about whether to use REST or the .NET StorageClient library and being able to compare them should be helpful.

These initial samples are all in C# but I would like to add other languages over time (and would welcome assistance in porting). Please do speak up if you encounter bugs, flaws, omissions in the samples -- or if you have suggestions.

Here are some good online resources for Windows Azure Storage:

Windows Azure Storage Documentation
http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd179355.aspx

Steve Marx's Blog (Microsoft)
http://blog.smarx.com/

Neil Mackenzie's Blog (Windows Azure MVP)
http://convective.wordpress.com/

Other storage samples:
http://azuresamples.com/

Announcing AzureSamples.com

AzureSamples.com is a new web site designed to help you discover Windows Azure samples more readily. Finding samples for Azure has been challenging in the past: there are only a handful of samples in the Windows Azure SDK and the lion’s share of samples are dispersed out on the web, posted by various Microsoft groups and community members. There hasn’t been one place to go to for samples—until now. With AzureSamples.com you can easily find samples in a streamlined way.

Using AzureSamples.com is simple. The site is organized by programming language: C#, VB.NET, Java, PHP, and Everything Else. Within each area, you can filter the samples listed by category (platform service) and search text. Once you find a sample you want, click the blue and white link button at right to navigate to its online home.



We’d love to get as many samples listed as possible—and that's where you can help. If you've written a great Azure sample, or know of one we should be including in our listings, let us know. To get a sample listed, simply navigate to the Submit area of the site and submit information about the sample. We generally get submissions reviewed and listed within 24 hours.


We hope you'll check out AzureSamples.com and let us know how we can improve it.