Exercise - Create a Blob trigger

In this unit, we're going to create an Azure function that displays the name and size of a blob when it's created or updated.

Create a blob trigger

Let's continue using your existing Azure Functions application and add a blob trigger.

Sign in to the Azure portal using the same account you used to activate the sandbox.
Under Azure services, select All resources. The All resources pane appears.
Select your Function App identified under the Type column. Your Function App pane appears.
Select the Functions tab in the center of the screen.
Select the Create button at the top of the Functions tab. The Create function pane appears.
Under Select a template, select Azure Blob Storage trigger, then select Next.
If you see a message saying Extensions not installed, select Install. Dependency installation can take a couple of minutes. Wait until the installation completes before continuing.
Under Template details, accept the default value for the Function name field.
Accept the default value for the Path field.
Under the Storage account connection dropdown list, select the New link. In the New Storage Account connection dialog box, select the storage account for this function app, and then select OK.
Select Create to create the function.

Now that we've created a blob trigger, let's use Storage browser to create a blob and trigger the function.

Open the storage account you used (or created) in a new tab.

Tip

You can duplicate a tab in most browsers by right-clicking the tab and selecting Duplicate from the menu. We want to use a new tab so we can switch between the two services we are working with.
In the Azure portal, under Azure services, select All resources. The All resources pane appears.
Select your storage account identified under the Type column. Your Storage account pane appears.
In the middle menu pane, select the Storage browser. The Storage browser pane appears where you can work with blobs and files.

The blob trigger is monitoring only the location described in the Path field. By default, your path should be:

samples-workitems/{name}

To create a container called samples-workitems:

Select Blob containers, then select Add container. The New container pane appears.
In the Name field, enter samples-workitems, accept the default Private setting in the Public access level field, then select Create.

Now that we've created our container to monitor, let's run our function so we can see output when a blob is created.

Switch back to the browser tab with your Azure Function (or reopen it).
Select your blob trigger in the Functions tab in the center of the screen. In the taskbar at the top of the screen, select Code + Test.
Expand the Logs tab at the bottom of the screen if necessary.
Select the App Insight Logs drop-down, and then select Filesystem Logs. Select OK when the Switching to filesystem based logs... message displays.

Our blob trigger is now up and listening for activity. Let's create a blob to see if we get a log message.

Switch back to the browser tab with Storage Browser.
In Storage Browser, select the samples-workitems container from the Blob containers list.
In the Authentication method: link at the top if the list, select Switch to Access key.
In the top menu bar, select Upload. The Upload blob pane opens.
From the Files field, select any file from your computer.
Select Upload.
Switch back to the Azure Function tab and check the output logs for a message that displays which file was uploaded. Your blob trigger should automatically execute. If you select Test/Run from the top menu bar, and then select Run in the function pane, it might result in an error due to the default value that is specified in the Test request body. You'll need to change the path from the Input tab in the request Body pane to a valid file for the test to run successfully.