Creating an API with Azure Functions

Almost all mobile apps communicate with an API to retrieve and store information. In many cases, as a mobile app developer, you might just have to use an API that already exists. However, if you're building your own product or service, you may need to create your own backend and web API.

There are several ways you can create an API, as well as several places you can host it, and certainly many different languages you can develop it in. For the purposes of this book, we will create a backend service and web API in the cloud using an Azure Function bound to Azure Table storage.

Azure Functions have a lot of capability and serve as a powerful "serverless" compute platform for numerous scenarios. You can create functions in Visual Studio or directly in the Azure portal and you can choose from .NET Core, Node.js, and several other runtime stacks. Since the primary focus of this book is developing a mobile app, I won't go too...