Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone

Updated Release: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 v1.2.3 (Mar 23, 2011)

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:28:46 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone provided developers with the first iteration of support for building backend services for Windows Phone apps using Windows Azure. The main areas of feedback we received from mobile developers was that they wanted a turn-key set of services for common functionality such as notifications, auth, and data. Windows Azure Mobile Services directly reflects this feedback by enabling developers to simply provision, configure, and consume scalable backend services. The downloads for this toolkit will be removed on the week of Feb 1st 2013 and all future improvements will be channeled into Windows Azure Mobile Services rather than this toolkit.

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

---
v1.2.3 - 7/5/2011

Support for WPDT 7.1 Tools Beta 2

v1.2.2 - 5/24/2011

Support for WPDT 7.1 Tools Beta (i.e. "Mango" Tools)
Bug fixes

v1.2.1 - 5/19/2011

Support for VB.NET
Bug fixes

v1.2.0 - 5/15/2011

Support for the Access Control Service 2.0
Support for Windows Azure Storage Queues
Updated management portal UI/UX
Support for Apple Push Notification service
Code refactoring (see the Change Log)
Bug fixes

Cloud Ready Package for Devices - 5/9/2011

Contains a Windows Azure service package (CSPKG) and configuration file (CSCFG)
Easily deploy directly into your Windows Azure account
Step-by-step instructions

v1.1.0 - 4/12/2011

Push Notification support (i.e. raw, tile, and toast)
Push Notification message generation via web application
Store identity token in isolated storage (also including logout functionality)
New users automatically have access to blobs and tables
Bug fixes

v1.0.0 - 3/23/2011

Visual Studio project templates for Windows Phone 7 and Windows Azure
Class libraries for Windows Azure storage and membership services optimized for use on the phone
A sample application
Documentation

Released: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 v1.2.3 (Mar 23, 2011)

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:28:46 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

Support for WPDT 7.1 Tools Beta 2

v1.2.2 - 5/24/2011

Support for WPDT 7.1 Tools Beta (i.e. "Mango" Tools)
Bug fixes

v1.2.1 - 5/19/2011

Support for VB.NET
Bug fixes

v1.2.0 - 5/15/2011

Support for the Access Control Service 2.0
Support for Windows Azure Storage Queues
Updated management portal UI/UX
Support for Apple Push Notification service
Code refactoring (see the Change Log)
Bug fixes

Cloud Ready Package for Devices - 5/9/2011

Contains a Windows Azure service package (CSPKG) and configuration file (CSCFG)
Easily deploy directly into your Windows Azure account
Step-by-step instructions

v1.1.0 - 4/12/2011

Push Notification support (i.e. raw, tile, and toast)
Push Notification message generation via web application
Store identity token in isolated storage (also including logout functionality)
New users automatically have access to blobs and tables
Bug fixes

v1.0.0 - 3/23/2011

Visual Studio project templates for Windows Phone 7 and Windows Azure
Class libraries for Windows Azure storage and membership services optimized for use on the phone
A sample application
Documentation

Updated Release: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.0 (Aug 30, 2011)

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:28:29 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

Support for SQL Azure as the membership provider
Sample OData service using SQL Azure for storing data
Full source code to the BabelCam sample
Upgraded to ASP.NET MVC 3
Updated to use the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 1.4
Updated to use the Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 RC
Resolved Entity Framework 4.1 Update 1 dependency checker issue (9/1)
Bug fixes

Released: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.0 (Aug 30, 2011)

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:28:29 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

Support for SQL Azure as the membership provider
Sample OData service using SQL Azure for storing data
Full source code to the BabelCam sample
Upgraded to ASP.NET MVC 3
Updated to use the Windows Azure Tools for Visual Studio 1.4
Updated to use the Windows Phone Developer Tools 7.1 RC
Resolved Entity Framework 4.1 Update 1 dependency checker issue (9/1)
Bug fixes

Updated Release: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.1 (Oct 24, 2011)

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:28:15 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011
Upgraded the tools tools to support the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW
Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package)
Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations
Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK StorageClient library
Added two new samples: Tweet Your Blobs and CRUD SQL Azure

Released: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.1 (Oct 24, 2011)

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:28:15 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011
Upgraded the tools tools to support the Windows Phone Developer Tools RTW
Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package)
Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations
Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK StorageClient library
Added two new samples: Tweet Your Blobs and CRUD SQL Azure

Updated Release: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.2 (Nov 29, 2011)

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:27:55 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure SDK for .NET – November 2011.
Updated BabelCam, CRUDSqlAzure, WPCloud.ACS, and WPCloud.SQL.ACS samples to include default ACS configuration to allow developers running the samples without owning an ACS namespace.

Released: Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone v1.3.2 (Nov 29, 2011)

Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:27:55 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure SDK for .NET – November 2011.
Updated BabelCam, CRUDSqlAzure, WPCloud.ACS, and WPCloud.SQL.ACS samples to include default ACS configuration to allow developers running the samples without owning an ACS namespace.

Updated Wiki: Change Log

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:27:24 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

Change Log for v1.3.1 to v1.3.2

Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.6 – November 2011
Updated BabelCam, CRUDSqlAzure, WPCloud.ACS, and WPCloud.SQL.ACS samples to include a default ACS configuration to allow developers running the samples without owning an ACS namespace.

Change Log for v1.3.0 to v1.3.1

Note: One important change starting with this release (v1.3.1) is that the C# and Visual Basic content have been split and ship as different packages in CodePlex.

Toolkit Services

Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 2010 1.5 – September 2011
Update SQL Azure only scenarios to use ASP.NET Universal Providers (through the System.Web.Providers v1.0.1 NuGet package)
Changed Shared Access Signature service interface to support more operations

StorageClient Library for Windows Phone

Refactored Blobs API to have a similar interface and usage to that provided by the Windows Azure SDK StorageClient library

Change Log for v1.2.3 to v1.3.0

Toolkit Services

Upgraded Silverlight for Windows Phone projects to Windows Phone OS 7.1
Upgraded Windows Azure projects to Windows Azure Tools for Microsoft Visual Studio 1.4 August 2011
Updated Web role project to ASP.NET MVC 3 using Razor view engine and HTML5
Updated JQuery libraries to the latest version and removed all unused JavaScript libraries
Changed Push Notifications User Registration Service interface to require the ApplicationId and DeviceId for its operations.
Renamed the System.Data.Services.Client library shipped as part of the toolkit to Microsoft.Samples.Data.Services.Client to avoid possible conflicts with the new version of the library included in the framework starting with Windows Phone SDK 7.1.

Change Log for v1.1.0 to v1.2.3

Toolkit Services

Renamed the WindowsPhoneCloud.Services project to WindowsPhoneCloud.Web. The same change was also applied to the root namespace.
Reorganized toolkit services and handlers into separated folders and namespaces.
Renamed LoginModel class to Login. This class is used by the AuthenticationService to generate an authentication token for the user.
Renamed CreateUserModel class to RegistrationUser and changed the name of its UserName property to Name. This class is used by the AuthenticationService to register new users.
Changed the HTTP method from POST to GET in the GetUpdates operation of the PushNotificationService.
Split the AdminController class into a several ones.
Removed the usage of the Role provider for Azure Tables to manage authorization. We are now storing the users’ privileges for Tables, Blobs and Queues in a custom Azure Table called “Privileges” (the “secRole” Azure Table is not longer used).

Changed the schema of the PushUserEndpoint Azure table. We changed the name of its UserName property to UserId.

StorageClient Library for Windows Phone

Renamed LoginModel class to Login. This class is used by the AuthenticationClient to obtain an authentication token for the user.
Renamed CreateUserModel class to RegistrationUser and changed the name of its UserName property to Name. This class is used by the AuthenticationClient to register new users.
Updated the signature of the IAuthenticationClient interface to receive success and exception callbacks instead of providing events.

AspProviders Library

Modified the library to move the configuration of the Providers for Azure Tables from the Web.config file to the ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file. In this way, the Storage Account information (name and key) only needs to be placed in a single place: the ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file.

Updated Wiki: Troubleshooting

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:27:13 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

You’ll find the following troubleshooting topics in this section:

User is Unable to Install the Certificate, Log in and Register in the Windows Phone Application
The 'take picture' Button Doesn’t Open the Camera When the Phone App is Tethered
An Error is Displayed Saying 'Location is not available' When Creating a New Project
An Error is Displayed When Clicking the 'Microsoft Push Notifications' Menu Option
The Phone Application Doesn’t Show the Identity Providers List
The Phone Application Receives Not Found as Responses to all Requests
A Database Error is Displayed When Accessing the Web Administration Portal
A 'Database Already exists' Error is Displayed When Accessing the Web Administration Portal

If you think you’ve found a bug and it’s not listed here, please take a look at Issue Tracker.

User is Unable to Install the Certificate, Log in and Register in the Windows Phone Application

Symptoms

When you start up the Windows Phone application, an error is displayed when you try to:

Install the SSL certificate
Log in with an existing user
Register a new user

Cause

The Windows Phone application is unable to communicate with the Web Role that is hosting the toolkit services.

Solution

Make sure that the Web Role services are running in the Windows Azure Compute Emulator. If it is not, in Solution Explorer right-click the Windows Azure project, point to Debug, and click Start new instance.
Once the Windows Azure Compute Emulator is running, open its user interface. To do this, in the Windows taskbar right-click the Windows Azure Emulator’s icon () and then click Show Computer Emulator UI.
In the Windows Azure Compute Emulator window, review the Service Details of the current deployment to make sure that the service is running over HTTPS on port 443 and HTTP on port 10080, both on IP address 127.0.0.1. If it is running on a different port or IP address, stop the deployment, and exit the Windows Azure Compute Emulator. Before starting a new debugging instance as explained above, make sure that the ports 443 and 10080 are unlocked

The 'take picture' Button Doesn’t Open the Camera When the Phone App is Tethered

Symptoms

When the Windows Phone sample application is deployed to a Windows Phone device and tethered, the take picture functionality () in the list blobs pivot item does not open the phone camera to capture a photo

Cause

The CameraCaptureTask works fine when tethered, but if you have the Zune client application opened on your machine, it will keep a lock on your Windows Phone device’s MediaLibrary. Therefore, the captured picture cannot be stored.

Solution

Close the Zune client application. If you are trying to debug through the CameraCaptureTask, you could use the WPConnect tool instead of the Zune client for device connectivity.

For more details, see the following article http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/gg180729(VS.92).aspx.

An Error is Displayed Saying 'Location is not available' When Creating a New Project

Symptoms

When the user attempts to create a new Windows Phone Cloud Application or Windows Phone Empty Cloud Application project, Visual Studio shows an error message saying, "Location is not available".

Cause

When the user has ReSharper installed in his/her environment, the project creation fails due to an access denied error on the temporary folders created by the Visual Studio Template Wizard during the process.

Workaround

Disable ReSharper. To do this, in Visual Studio click Options inside the Tools menu. Now, go to ReSharper section, click Suspend and then OK. After that, close and reopen your Visual Studio instance and you will now be able to create new Windows Phone Cloud Application and Windows Phone Empty Cloud Application projects.

In order to enable ReSharper again, in Visual Studio click Options inside the Tools menu. Now, go to ReSharper section, click Resume and then OK.

An Error is Displayed When Clicking the 'Microsoft Push Notifications' Menu Option

Symptoms

When you start the Web Role running the Toolkit’s services, log in using the administrator credentials and click the Microsoft Push Notifications menu option, then you get one of the following errors:

"Object reference not set to an instance of an object." – When using ACS for authentication
"Guid should contain 32 digits with 4 dashes (xxxxx-…-xxxx)." – When using Membership for authentication

Cause

The reason why you are encountering these errors is that you are using the same Windows Azure Storage account for running your Windows Phone Cloud Application project using different authentication methods. That is, you have selected to run your application first using Windows Azure Access Control Service (ACS) and then ASP.NET Membership or vice versa.

Solution

To fix this issue you need to remove users created with the old authentication method in the Windows Azure Storage tables used by the application. To do this, you can use a tool like https://www.myazurestorage.com to remove the old users in the PushUserEndpoints table (if you are using the Storage Emulator you can use other tools like the Azure Storage Explorer).

The Phone Application Doesn’t Show the Identity Providers List

Symptoms

When developing an application using Windows Azure Access Control Services , with Visual Web Developer 2010 Express and Visual Studio 2010 Express for Windows Phone, when running the phone application you get the error:

Cause

The name of the relying party realm does not match between the Azure and Phone projects.

Solution

Make sure that the Relying Party Realm set in the App.xaml file is the same as the one set in the ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file in the Azure project:

The Phone Application Receives Not Found as Responses to all Requests

Symptoms

When running an application developed from one of the project templates or running one of the samples included in the toolkit, the phone application shows the following error message:

Cause

The causes for this error could be several, most commonly:

The Windows Azure Web Role has not finished starting
The user has not installed the SSL certificate in the phone

Solution

If the Web Role has not started, wait until the Web Role has started correctly and retry the operation in the phone application.

If the Web Role has started correctly, it is possible that you forgot to install the SSL certificate.

If you are running one of the samples or application developed using the project templates:

Press the back button until you reach the log in page.
In the log in page, click the Install certificate link. This will open Internet Explorer in the Windows Phone Emulator at http://127.0.0.1:10080/127.0.0.1.cer.

Note: In order to consume the REST services over HTTPS in a Windows Phone device or in the Windows Phone Emulator, you need to use a trusted SSL certificate. If you do not have one, you can use a self-signed certificate, but you need to install it in the phone before consuming the services. Since the Windows Azure Computer Emulator always uses the 127.0.0.1 self-signed certificate, we need to install it in the Windows Phone Emulator before continuing with the next steps.
Click the shield icon to install the Windows Azure Compute Emulator’s SSL certificate in the Windows Phone Emulator. Finally, click install to confirm that you want to install the certificate.

Important: If you leave the Windows Phone Emulator open, you do not need to install the certificate every time that you run the application. However, if you close the Windows Phone Emulator, you will have to install it again.

A Database Error is Displayed When Accessing the Web Administration Portal

Symptoms

When you start the Web Role running the Toolkit’s services, you get the error: The underlying provider failed on Open.

Cause

The reason why you are running into this problem is that SQL Server does not have the correct permissions to access the App_Data folder in the Web Role project.

Solution

To fix this issue you need to remove the App_Data folder in the Web Project and re-create it:

Right-click on the App_Data folder, click Delete and confirm the operation.
Right-click on the Web project and select Add -> Add ASP.NET Folder -> App_Data.

A 'Database Already exists' Error is Displayed When Accessing the Web Administration Portal

Symptoms

When you start the Web Role running the toolkit’s services, you get the error: The underlying provider failed on Open, with a detail that says: ‘Database already exists’.

Cause

The reason why you are running into this problem is that you have created two different solutions with the same name, and the database file from the first one is still attached to the SQL Server user instance.

Solution

To fix this issue you need to rename the database file in one of the two solutions:

Right-click on the Web Role in the Windows Azure project and click Properties.
Click Settings, select the SqlDataContextConnectionString and change the value of the settings: AttachDBFileName and Initial Catalog to a new unique value.

More Information

The following articles may be useful when troubleshooting a Windows Phone application:

Next step: Change Log

Updated Wiki: How To Create a SQL Azure Database Server

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:27:00 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone project template for Visual Studio can generate a project, which is fully configured to provide read only access to an OData service on top of a SQL Azure Database.

In order to accomplish this, you need to have an active subscription with SQL Azure Database; furthermore, the project template needs to acquire some information about your SQL Azure Database Server.

In the project template wizard, you will use the Database Administrator user, since Entity Framework 4.1 Code-First requires database administrator privileges to create the model database. However, you may want to change this in applications deployed to production environments.

Retrieving your SQL Azure Server Name

Go to the Windows Azure Platform portal at https://windows.azure.com.
Log in to your Windows Live account.
At the Windows Azure Platform portal home page, click New Database Server on the ribbon.
To create a server, select your subscription on the left pane. Click Create on the Server ribbon.
Select a region from the Region drop down list, and then click Next. The location determines which datacenter the database will reside in.
Enter an administrator account name and password and click Next.

Note: An administrator account is a master account used to manage the new server. You should avoid using this account in connection strings where the username and password may be exposed. The password policy requires the password to follow certain rules.
Click Finish to create the new server. You will configure firewall rules later on.
Finally, the new server information, including Fully Qualified Server Name, is shown.

Note: The fully qualified domain name of the server uses the following format:
<ServerName>.database.windows.net where <ServerName> identifies the server. You must use the ServerName you have just created later on the Windows Phone Application.
Expand the subscription node located on the left pane, and then click the server name you have created. The Server Information page allows you to perform basic administration of the database server.
The Firewall Rules allows you to specify a list of IP addresses that can access your SQL Azure Server. The firewall will deny all connections by default, so be sure to configure your allow list so that existing clients can connect to the server.

Note: Changes to your firewall settings can take some time to become effective.

You now have a database server created and ready for this application. This database can be connected to from anywhere in the world.

You should use the user name and password from step 6 and the Server Name from step 8 to configure the application generated by the project template.

Updated Wiki: Obtain a bitly Username and API Key

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:26:50 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

The Tweet Your Blobs sample uses bitly API to shorten picture URLs before tweeting them. In order to use bitly API you need to obtain a bitly Username and API Key.

Obtaining a bitly Username and API Key

Navigate to http://bitly.com/a/your_api_key.
In case you already have a bitly account, click Sign In. Otherwise, click Sing Up and complete the process.
Copy the bitly Username and bitly API Key values and use it during the TweetYourBlobs setup process.

Updated Wiki: Obtain a Bing Application Id

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:26:38 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

The BabelCam sample uses Bing Translator Services to translate text in pictures. In order to use Bing services you need to obtain a valid Bing AppID.

Obtaining a Bing AppID

Navigate to http://www.bing.com/developers/appids.aspx and click Sign In.
Sign In with your Windows Live ID account.
Click Create an AppID.
Fill in the form with your information and click Agree to accept the API terms of use.
Copy your Bing AppID and use it during the BabelCam setup process.

Updated Wiki: Obtain a Project Hawaii Application ID

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:26:27 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

The BabelCam sample uses Project Hawaii’s Services in the Cloud to recognize text in pictures. In order to use Project Hawaii’s services you need to obtain a valid Application ID.

Obtaining a Project Hawaii Application ID

Navigate to http://hawaiiguidgen.cloudapp.net/default.aspx and click Sign In.
Sign in using your Windows Live ID account.
Click Register this Live Id With Hawaii.
Copy your Project Hawaii’s Application ID and use it in the BabelCam setup process.

Updated Wiki: Deploy to Windows Azure

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:26:15 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

In order to deploy the toolkit services generated by either the Windows Phone Cloud Application or the Windows Phone Empty Cloud Application project templates to a Windows Azure Hosted Service, please follow these steps:

Create a Certificate

Open the Visual Studio Command Prompt window as an administrator.
Change the directory to the location where you want to save the certificate file.
Type the following command, making sure to replace <CertificateName> with your hosted service URL:
```
makecert -sky exchange -r -n "CN=<CertificateName>" -pe -a sha1 -len 2048 -ss My "<CertificateName>.cer"
```
For example:

Note: The makecert tool will both create the .cer file and register the certificate in your Personal Certificates store. For more information, check the following article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg432987.aspx.

Export the PFX File

Open the Certificate Manager snap-in for the management console by typing certmgr.msc in the Start menu textbox.
The new certificate was automatically added to the personal certificate store. Export the certificate by right-clicking it, pointing to All Tasks, and then clicking Export.
On the Export Private Key page, make sure to select Yes, export the private key.
Choose a name and export the file to a .pfx file.
Finish the wizard.

Note: You now have a copy of the certificate (.pfx) with the private key. For more information, check the following article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/gg432987.aspx.

Upload the PFX File to Windows Azure

Open a browser, navigate to the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal at https://windows.azure.com and log in with your credentials.
Select Hosted Services, Storage Accounts & CDN and then Hosted Services.
Expand your hosted service project, and select the Certificates folder.
Click Add Certificate.
Click Browse and select the PFX file you saved. Enter the password, and click Create.
Once the certificate has been uploaded and created, copy the Thumbprint for later use.

Supporting Apple Push Notifications

During the project creation through the project template, you are given the option to support Apple Push Notifications through the Azure Web role.

If you chose to support Apple Push Notifications, please follow these additional steps:

In order to use the toolkit to send Apple push notifications, you should have obtained the appropriate SSL certificate for your iOS application. You can find more information on how to obtain an Apple development certificate in the Provisioning and Development article in the Local and Push Notification Programming Guide.
Upload the same Apple development certificate selected during the project template wizard to your hosted service. To do this, you can follow the same steps required to upload the SSL certificate described in the previous section.

Update and Deploy to Windows Azure

In the Windows Azure Project, double-click the role (e.g. WPCloudApp1.Web) to open the role properties.
Select the Settings tab and update the DataConnectionString and Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Plugins.Diagnostics.ConnectionString to point to your production storage account.
Select the Certificates tab, and set the SslCertificate property value to the Thumbprint you saved from the Windows Azure portal. This will replace the thumbprint for the localhost certificate with the thumbprint related to the certificate you uploaded into your hosted service.
Add the .cer file to your web application project. This way, you can point your phone users to download the certificate and install into the emulator. Right-click on the Web application project, choose Add Existing Item, select the .cer file you previously created, and add it to the project.
Open the .cer file properties and make sure that the Build Action is set to Content.
Now you can publish your Windows Azure project to your hosted service. You can do this from the Windows Azure Platform Management Portal or directly from Visual Studio 2010.

Update Your Windows Phone Project to Consume Your Windows Azure Hosted Service

In your Windows Phone project, open the App.xaml file.

Update the following resources:

Key	Value
SSLCertificateUrl	http://<YourDNSPrefix>.cloudapp.net:10080/<CertificateName>.cer
SharedAccessSignatureServiceEndpoint	https://<YourDNSPrefix>.cloudapp.net/SharedAccessSignatureService
AzureStorageTableProxyEndpoint	https://<YourDNSPrefix>.cloudapp.net/AzureTablesProxy.axd
AzureStorageQueueProxyEndpoint	https://<YourDNSPrefix>.cloudapp.net/AzureQueuesProxy.axd
AuthenticationServiceEndpoint	https://<YourDNSPrefix>.cloudapp.net/AuthenticationService
RegistrationServiceEndpoint	https://<YourDNSPrefix>.cloudapp.net/RegistrationService
PushNotificationServiceEndpoint	https://<YourDNSPrefix>.cloudapp.net/PushNotificationService
SqlOdataEndpoint	https://<YourDNSPrefix>.cloudapp.net/SqlAzureSampleOdataService

To test against the deployed services, right-click the Windows Phone project, navigate to the Debug context menu, and click on Start new instance.

Updated Wiki: Obtain Namespace and Management Key

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:26:06 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

To watch a screencast on how to get started using ACS, please visit Getting Started with ACS and the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 on Channel 9.

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone project template for Visual Studio can generate a project which is fully configured for outsourcing authentication functions to ACS, and configure ACS with some basic settings. You can hit F5 just after creation and the application will be ready to authenticate users from Windows Live ID, Google and Yahoo right out of the box.

In order to accomplish this, you need to have an active subscription with ACS; furthermore, the project template needs to acquire some information about your ACS namespace.

If you need to create an ACS namespace, please refer to the walkthrough here. Note, you only need to go through the sections “Accessing the AppFabric Portal” and “Service Namespace Creation”; the project template will take care of the rest for you.

The ACS Namespace field expects the unique string you chose as your namespace.

The Management Key can be obtained by navigating to https://{MYNAMESPACE}.accesscontrol.windows.net/v2/mgmt/web/ServiceAccount/ManagementKey/Edit

Substitute {MYNAMESPACE} with your ACS namespace, then click on Symmetric Key and copy the content of the Key field.

Updated Wiki: Choosing the Access Control Strategy

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:25:55 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

To watch a screencast on how to get started using ACS, please visit Getting Started with ACS and the Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone 7 on Channel 9.

The Windows Azure Toolkit for Windows Phone project template for Visual Studio can implement two different access control strategies: it can generate and include in the project a classic ASP.NET membership store, or it can outsource authentication to the Windows Azure Access Control Service. Here there is a brief comparison of the two options.

Create a new ASP.NET membership store in Windows Azure Tables

If you choose this option, the template will generate an ASP.NET membership store and place it in Windows Azure storage. The Windows Phone application will include UI elements for registering and logging in users via username and password, which will be stored in the membership database.

This option implements a very well known approach, and has the least amount of requirements: the project can be entirely self-contained. It can be very convenient when you are using the toolkit as a learning tool, or if you foresee that your application will have to include its own account store.

On the other hand, managing a user store may become a burden; and one application relying on its own user store cannot be easily integrated with other solutions.

Use the Windows Azure Access Control Service

If you choose this option, the template will configure your application to outsource authentication to the Windows Azure Access Control Service. This means that the Windows Phone application will enable users to register and log in by reusing their existing accounts from identity providers such as Windows Live ID, Google, Yahoo and possibly from their Active Directory or Facebook.

In order to take advantage of this option you need to have a namespace with the Windows Azure Access Control Service, and an active internet connection for communicating with ACS itself and the configured identity providers. You can obtain ACS namespaces for free thanks to a promotion that will run until at least the end of 2011.

The template gathers some info about your namespace and generates an application that is fully integrated with ACS with some basic settings.

The ACS approach gives you the most reach, as it can authenticate users from well known identity providers on the web; it also allows you to reuse in your mobile application accounts from your local directory.

Updated Wiki: CRUDSqlAzure

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:25:45 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

This section provides a walkthrough for the CRUDSqlAzure sample application. This application was developed using the Windows Phone Cloud Application project template included in this toolkit.

Starting the application

After installing the toolkit and running the SetupSample.cmd setup script for this sample, perform the following steps to go through the CRUDSqlAzure application.

Note: If you face any problems while following these steps, please make sure to review the Troubleshooting section.

Open Visual Studio 2010 as administrator (this is required to run Windows Azure projects).
In the File menu, point to Open and then click Project/Solution.
Browse to the Samples\WP7.1\CRUDSqlAzure folder, choose CRUDSqlAzure.sln and click Open.
Explore the sample. You should see the following projects:
- CRUDSqlAzure: Windows Azure project with a Web Role configured.
- CRUDSqlAzure.Phone: Silverlight for Windows Phone project containing a sample application that shows how to perform CRUD operations against an OData service.
- CRUDSqlAzure.Web: ASP.NET MVC 3 project configured as a Web Role containing the services consumed by the phone application and the administration pages.
Additionally, the solution includes the source code for the following libraries used:
1. Microsoft.Samples.Data.Services.Client.dll: Modified version of the OData client library for Windows Phone (System.Data.Services.Client) to make it work with the Windows Azure Table Service API (http://odata.codeplex.com).
2. MIcrosoft.Samples.DPE.OAuth.dll: Microsoft DPE OAuth2 library.
3. SL.Phone.Federation.dll: Microsoft Silverlight ACS sign in control.
4. WindowsPhoneCloud.StorageClient.dll: Windows Azure Storage Client library for Windows Phone.
Make sure that you do not have any Web site running in ports 443 and 10080 on your local IIS.
Note: By default, the ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Role is configured to run over two different endpoints: one HTTPS in port 443 and another HTTP in port 10080.
Make sure that the target for Silverlight for Windows Phone projects is set to Windows Phone Emulator.
In Solution Explorer, right-click the Windows Azure project, point to Debug and click Start new instance.
Wait for the Web Role to start and click the Continue to this website (not recommended) link to be able to browse the site despite of the certificate warning. You will get a forbidden error because the Web site does not have any pages (it only hosts a WCF Service), and IIS by default does not allow anonymous users to list the site directory.
To log into the Web application use the following credentials:
- User Name: admin
- Password: (with a zero)
In Solution Explorer, right-click the Windows Phone project, point to Debug and click Start new instance. This will launch the Windows Phone Emulator and start the application.
The application will redirect you to the log in page.
In the log in page, click the Install certificate link. This will open Internet Explorer in the Windows Phone Emulator at http://127.0.0.1:10080/127.0.0.1.cer.

Note: In order to consume the REST services over HTTPS in a Windows Phone device or in the Windows Phone Emulator, you need to use a trusted SSL certificate. If you do not have one, you can use a self-signed certificate, but you need to install it in the phone before consuming the services. Since the Computer Emulator always uses the 127.0.0.1 self-signed certificate, we need to install it in the Windows Phone Emulator before continuing with the next steps.
Click the shield icon to install the Windows Azure Compute Emulator’s SSL certificate in the Windows Phone Emulator. Finally, click install to confirm that you want to install the certificate.

Important: If you leave the Windows Phone Emulator open, you do not need to install the certificate every time that you run the application. However, if you close the Windows Phone Emulator, you will have to install it again.
Once the certificate is installed, click ok and navigate back to the running application using the left arrow ().

Authenticating The User

Select the identity provider you want to authenticate with and log in providing your account information.
If this is the first time you logged into the application, you will be redirected to the register page. Enter a name and an email address for the user, and then click register. Wait for the registration to complete. If the registration was successful, you will see the Registration Successful message. Click ok and you will be redirected back to the log in page.

Note: The Windows Phone Emulator supports mapping of the keyboard on your development computer to the hardware keyboard on a Windows Phone (by default is not enabled). To enable the keyboard in the Windows Phone Emulator press the PAGE UP or PAUSE/BREAK key. To disable it, press the PAGE DOWN or PAUSE/BREAK key. For more information, see the following article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ff754352(VS.92).aspx.

Working with all permissions

After completing the log in page, you will be taken to the products page. You can browse all the products loaded in the database. Click in the Chai product to view its details.
In this page, you can see the detailed information of each record in the Products entity set.
Change the Name to Chai (Tea) and click the save button (). You will notice an error message saying that you do not have permissions to update products.
Go to the administration site and in the Users tab, choose SQL Update for the user John Doe and click Save.
Back in the phone application click the save button () again. This time, the changes will be saved and you will be taken to the Products page where you can see the new data for the product.
Now, choose the Chang item and in the details page select Discontinued, and click the save button (). Once the product is discontinued, click the Chang item again and in the details page click the delete button ().You will notice an error message saying that you do not have permissions to remove products.
Go to the administration site and in the Users tab, choose SQL Delete for the user John Doe and click Save.
Back in the phone application click the delete button () again. This time, the item will be deleted and you will be taken back to the products page, this time the product will be removed.
To add a product, click the plus button (). Load the form with new sample data and click the save button (). You will notice an error message saying that you do not have permissions to add products.
Go to the administration site and in the Users tab, choose SQL Create for the user John Doe and click Save.
Back in the phone emulator, click the save button () again. This time the product will be added and the application will navigate to the products page. To see the item you have just added, scroll to the bottom of the page, when you reach the end, click Load More…, repeat this action until you reach the end of the list.
Finally, go to the administration site and in the Users tab, choose SQL Read for the user John Doe and click Save.
Back in the phone emulator, click the refresh button and notice the error message saying that you do not have permissions to read the products entity set.

Next step: Troubleshooting

Updated Wiki: TweetYourBlobs

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:25:20 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

This section provides a walkthrough for the TweetYourBlobs sample application. This application was developed using the Windows Phone Cloud Application project template included in this toolkit.

Starting the Application

After installing the toolkit and running the SetupSample.cmd setup script for this sample, perform the following steps to go through the TweetYourBlobs application.

Note: If you face any problems while following these steps, please make sure to review the Troubleshooting section.

Open Visual Studio 2010 as administrator (this is required to run Windows Azure projects).
In the File menu, point to Open and then click Project/Solution.
Browse to the Samples\WP7.1\TweetYourBlobs folder, choose TweetYourBlobs.sln and click Open.
Explore the sample. You should see the following projects:
- TweetYourBlobs: Windows Azure project with a Web Role configured.
- TweetYourBlobs.Phone: Silverlight for Windows Phone project containing a sample application that shows how to work with Blobs and Containers.
- TweetYourBlobs.Web: ASP.NET MVC 3 project configured as a Web Role containing the services consumed by the phone application. This project does not contain a Web administration portal; it only hosts the required WCF services.
Additionally, the solution includes the source code for the following libraries used:
- Microsoft.Samples.Data.Services.Client: Modified version of the OData client library for Windows Phone (System.Data.Services.Client) to make it work with the Windows Azure Table Service API (http://odata.codeplex.com).
- WindowsPhoneCloud.StorageClient: Windows Azure Storage Client library for Windows Phone.
Make sure that you do not have any Web site running in ports 443 and 10080 on your local IIS.
Note: By default, the ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Role is configured to run over two different endpoints: one HTTPS in port 443 and another HTTP in port 10080.
In Solution Explorer, right-click the Windows Azure project, point to Debug and click Start new instance.
Wait for the Web Role to start and click the Continue to this website (not recommended) link to be able to browse the site despite of the certificate warning. You will get a forbidden error because the Web site does not have any pages (it only hosts a WCF Service), and IIS by default does not allow anonymous users to list the site directory.
In Solution Explorer, right-click the Windows Phone project, point to Debug and click Start new instance. This will launch the Windows Phone Emulator and start the application.
The application will redirect you to the main page.
In the main page, click the Install certificate link. This will open Internet Explorer in the Windows Phone Emulator at http://127.0.0.1:10080/127.0.0.1.cer.

Note: In order to consume the REST services over HTTPS in a Windows Phone device or in the Windows Phone Emulator, you need to use a trusted SSL certificate. If you do not have one, you can use a self-signed certificate, but you need to install it in the phone before consuming the services. Since the Computer Emulator always uses the 127.0.0.1 self-signed certificate, we need to install it in the Windows Phone Emulator before continuing with the next steps.
Click the shield icon to install the Windows Azure Compute Emulator’s SSL certificate in the Windows Phone Emulator. Finally, click install to confirm that you want to install the certificate.

Important: If you leave the Windows Phone Emulator open, you do not need to install the certificate every time that you run the application. However, if you close the Windows Phone Emulator, you will have to install it again.
Once the certificate is installed, click ok and navigate back to the running application using the left arrow ().

Taking a Picture and Uploading it to a Blob Container

In the main page, click the camera button to open the device camera. Click the button in the top-right corner of the screen to take a photo and then click accept. This will redirect you to the tweet picture page.
In the tweet picture page, type the name of the container where you want to upload your picture. Notice that the autocomplete list of available containers is filtered while you type. If you type a container name that does not exist in the storage, it will be created. Additionally, if you check the Make container public option, the Container ACL will be changed to full public read access.
Type a name for the blob. Additionally, check the Include location data option if want to include the GPS location value as blob metadata. Finally, click tweet. If everything worked as expected, Internet Explorer will be opened in the Windows Phone Emulator showing the Twitter mobile page.

Tweeting your Blob

In the Sign in! page, enter your Twitter credentials and click Sign in.
You will see a message ready to be tweeted with the blob URL shortened by bitly. Click Tweet to publish it. If you then click the link inside the tweet you have just sent, you will navigate to the blob containing your picture.

Next step: CRUD Sql Azure

Updated Wiki: BabelCam

nharris — Mon, 21 Jan 2013 21:25:10 GMT

This Toolkit is now deprecated and is now

superseded by Windows Azure Mobile Services

To get started with Mobile Services, sign up for a Windows Azure account and receive 10 free Mobile Services.

This section provides a walkthrough for the BabelCam sample application. This application was developed using the Windows Phone Cloud Application project template included in this toolkit.

Starting the application

After installing the toolkit and running the SetupSample.cmd setup script for this sample, perform the following steps to go through the BabelCam application.

Note: If you face any problems while following these steps, please make sure to review the Troubleshooting section.

Open Visual Studio 2010 as administrator (this is required to run Windows Azure projects).
In the File menu, point to Open and then click Project/Solution.
Explore the sample. You should see the following projects:
Explore the sample. You should see the following projects:
- BabelCam: Windows Azure project with a Web and a Worker role.
- BabelCam.Infrastructure: A class library project with helpers and model classes common to both the Web and Worker Roles.
- BabelCam.Phone: Silverlight for Windows Phone project containing a sample application that shows how to receive push notifications and consume Windows Azure Tables, Blobs and Queues.
- BabelCam.Web: ASP.NET MVC 3 project configured as a Web Role containing the sample services and the administration pages.
- BabelCam.Worker: Class library project configured as a Worker role containing the sample services for image OCR and translating services.
Additionally, the solution includes the source code for the following libraries used:
- AspProviders: ASP.NET Providers for Windows Azure Tables (Membership, Roles, Profile and Session State Store).
- Microsoft.Samples.Data.Services.Client: Modified version of the OData client library for Windows Phone (System.Data.Services.Client) to make it work with the Windows Azure Table Service API (http://odata.codeplex.com).
- WindowsPhoneCloud.StorageClient: Windows Azure Storage Client library for Windows Phone.
- WindowsPhone.Recipes.Push.Messages (Microsoft Push only): Push Notification Server Side Helper Library (http://create.msdn.com/education/catalog/article/pnhelp-wp7).
- DPE.OAuth: Microsoft DPE OAuth2 library.
- SL.Phone.Federation: Microsoft Silverlight ACS sign in control.
- Hawaii.Services.Client: Ported service library from the MSR Hawaii Project (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hawaii/).
- Hawaii.Services.Client.Ocr: Ported OCR service library from the MSR Hawaii Project (http://research.microsoft.com/en-us/um/redmond/projects/hawaii/).
Make sure that you do not have any Web site running in ports 443 and 10080 on your local IIS.
Note: By default, the ASP.NET MVC 3 Web Role is configured to run over two different endpoints: one HTTPS in port 443 and another HTTP in port 10080.
Make sure that the target for Silverlight for Windows Phone projects is set to Windows Phone Emulator.
In Solution Explorer, right-click the Windows Azure project, point to Debug and click Start new instance.
Wait for the Web Role to start and click the Continue to this website (not recommended) link to be able to browse the site despite of the certificate warning.
To log into the Web application use the following credentials:
- User Name: admin
- Password: (with a zero)
In Solution Explorer, right-click the Windows Phone project, point to Debug and click Start new instance. This will launch the Windows Phone Emulator and start the application.
The application will redirect you to the log in page.
In the log in page, click the Install certificate link. This will open Internet Explorer in the Windows Phone Emulator at http://127.0.0.1:10080/127.0.0.1.cer.

Note: In order to consume the REST services over HTTPS in a Windows Phone device or in the Windows Phone Emulator, you need to use a trusted SSL certificate. If you do not have one, you can use a self-signed certificate, but you need to install it in the phone before consuming the services. Since the Computer Emulator always uses the 127.0.0.1 self-signed certificate, we need to install it in the Windows Phone Emulator before continuing with the next steps.
Click the shield icon to install the Windows Azure Compute Emulator’s SSL certificate in the Windows Phone Emulator. Finally, click install to confirm that you want to install the certificate.

Important: If you leave the Windows Phone Emulator open, you do not need to install the certificate every time that you run the application. However, if you close the Windows Phone Emulator, you will have to install it again.
Once the certificate is installed, click ok and navigate back to the running application using the left arrow ( ).

Authenticating the User

In the log in page you can choose to log in using an identity provider or use the application as a guest user, if you choose Don’t want to log in? you will be taken to the babels page directly.
If you want to log in using an identity provider, select the identity provider you want to authenticate with and log in providing your account information.
If this is the first time you logged into the application, you will be redirected to the register page. Enter a name and an email address for the user, and then click register. Wait for the registration to complete. If the registration was successful, you will see the Registration Successful message. Click ok and you will be redirected back to the log in page.

Note: The Windows Phone Emulator supports mapping of the keyboard on your development computer to the hardware keyboard on a Windows Phone (by default is not enabled). To enable the keyboard in the Windows Phone Emulator press the PAGE UP or PAUSE/BREAK key. To disable it, press the PAGE DOWN or PAUSE/BREAK key. For more information, see the following article: http://msdn.microsoft.com/library/ff754352(VS.92).aspx.
After completing the log in page, you will be taken to the babels page, wait until the application finishes registering for push notifications before using the application. The connection status should be connected and the application should indicate the time it received the last notification:

Sending Babels for Translation

Flick or pan to the left to navigate to the babels pivot item and click the camera button ( ) in the application bar. The phone’s camera will be open. Click the button in the top-right corner of the screen to take a photo and then click accept. This will redirect you to the upload picture page.
In the upload picture page, select English in the From list and English in the To list and finally clicked upload. If everything worked as expected, you will see a message box saying that the images was successfully uploaded. Click ok to navigate back to the babels pivot page.
Back in the babels pivot page, wait for a few seconds while the image is processed. After a short period, you should receive a push notification indicating that no text was found on the image.
The solution contains a sample image that can be used for testing. Go back to Visual Studio or Visual Studio Express for Windows Phone and in the Solution Explorer, choose the BabelCam.Phone project and find the Resources and Toolkit.Content folders:
To see how BabelCam works with this sample image, go back in the Windows Phone Emulator and, in the babels pivot page, click Translate a sample text image. In the upload picture page, choose French as the target language and click upload. If everything worked as expected, you will see a message box saying that the images was successfully uploaded. Click ok to navigate back to the babels pivot page.
Back in the babels pivot page, wait for a few seconds while the image is processed. After a short period, you should receive a push notification with the translated text to French.

Note: If you want to use a different sample image for translation, replace the sampletext.jpg file in both Resources and Toolkit.Content folders, rebuild the application and restart it.

Viewing Previos Babels

BabelCam archives all your past babels in a Windows Azure Storage Table. Follow the steps below to learn how to view your past babels.

Flick or pan to the left to navigate to my babels pivot item and click in the refresh icon (). The pivot page will show all your previous babels sent for translation with the date and time it was processed.
If you scroll down or up the list of babels, you can see all your past babels.
Click in the text of any babel and a browser window will open showing the original image that generated that babel.

Next step: TweetYourBlobs