Create Hosted Service Using Windows Azure Management API

In this article I will discuss how we can create a Hosted Service in Windows Azure using the Windows Azure Management API.

To create a Hosted Service you need to perform a POST operation to the following URI. You need to change the subscription id to your subscription Id.
https://management.core.windows.net/%3Csubscription-id%3E/services/hostedservices

While making the request, the Request Header must contain information as below:


The Request Body must contain XML as a body. XML elements should be in the same order as shown below.

<?xml version="1.0" encoding="utf-8"?>
<CreateHostedService xmlns="http://schemas.microsoft.com/windowsazure">
  <ServiceName>service-name</ServiceName>
  <Label>base64-encoded-service-label</Label>
  <Description>description</Description> 
<Location>location</Location>
  <AffinityGroup>affinity-group</AffinityGroup>
</CreateHostedService>

On successful creation of the hosted service, status code 201 will get returned. The response contains no body.

For more details, read the MSDN reference here.

To create a hosted service I have created the following function. To create the service you need to pass the following parameters:

1. Service Name : This is name of the service you want to create
2. Label : This is service label
3. Description : This is service description
4. Location : This is data center in which service will get deployed

public  String CreateHostedService(String subscriptionId, String serviceName, String label, String description, String location)
{
    XDocument payload = CreatePayloadToCreateService(serviceName, label, description, location);
    string operationUri = "https://management.core.windows.net/"+subscriptionId+"/services/hostedservices";
    String requestId = Invoke(payload,operationUri);
    return requestId;
}

In function shown above I am calling two different functions.

1. One method to create payload. This payload will be passed as XML to perform POST operation
2. Invoke method will perform actual HTTP request to Windows Azure portal.

The following function will create a payload and return as XML. LINQ to XML is being used to create the payload XML.

private XDocument CreatePayloadToCreateService(String serviceName, String label,String description, String location)
{
    String base64LabelName = ConvertToBase64String(label);
    XNamespace wa = "http://schemas.microsoft.com/windowsazure";
    XElement xServiceName = new XElement(wa + "ServiceName", serviceName);
    XElement xLabel = new XElement(wa + "Label", base64LabelName);
    XElement xDescription = new XElement(wa + "Description", description);
    XElement xLocation = new XElement(wa + "Location", location);
    //XElement xAffinityGroup = new XElement(wa + "AffinityGroup", affinityGroup);
    XElement createHostedService = new XElement(wa + "CreateHostedService");
    createHostedService.Add(xServiceName);
    createHostedService.Add(xLabel);
    createHostedService.Add(xDescription);
    createHostedService.Add(xLocation);
    //createHostedService.Add(xAffinityGroup);|
    XDocument payload = new XDocument();
    payload.Add(createHostedService);
    payload.Declaration = new XDeclaration("1.0", "UTF-8", "no");
    return payload;
}

Another method used in the CreateHosetdService function was Invoke. This function is used to make a HTTP request to the Azure portal.

public String Invoke(XDocument payload,string operationUri)
{
    HttpWebRequest httpWebRequest = Helper.CreateHttpWebRequest(new Uri(operationUri), "POST");
    using (Stream requestStream = httpWebRequest.GetRequestStream())
    {
        using (StreamWriter streamWriter =
        new StreamWriter(requestStream,
        System.Text.UTF8Encoding.UTF8))
        {
            payload.Save(streamWriter,
            SaveOptions.DisableFormatting);
        }
    }
    String requestId;
    using (HttpWebResponse response = (HttpWebResponse)httpWebRequest.GetResponse())
    {
        requestId = response.Headers["x-ms-request-id"];
    }
    return requestId;
}

In this way you can create a hosted service. I hope this article is useful. Thanks for reading.