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Getting Started with Worker Roles

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Colin Scott edited this page Aug 27, 2014 · 5 revisions

Creating

A Worker Role that is to use LightBlue is created using the standard Azure tooling. After creating a Worker role add a NuGet reference to LightBlue using:

Install-Package LightBlue -pre

Requirements

The Worker Role must be using the 2.4 version of the Azure SDK. The LightBlue NuGet package will ensure that the requisite NuGet packages for other dependencies are installed.

Developing LightBlue Roles

Except where the role uses the Azure APIs coding a worker role is no different to how it would otherwise be implemented. Instead of calling the Azure APIs the LightBlue APIs are substituted. These may be accessed via LightBlueContext or via an IoC container (see Configuring IoC).

Running

Worker roles are hosted in LightBlue by LightBlue.Host.exe, provided by the LightBlue.Hosts NuGet package.

LightBlue.Host.exe is the process that must be executed to start a Worker Role inside LightBlue. This may be executed in a script or from the command line. In Visual Studio it is convenient to set this as the external process to be run when the Worker Role project is run and to set that project as the Startup Project (or one of them in the case that you have multiple roles). This will allow you to debug the role as you would expect.

The host requires a number of command line parameters to be passed in order for it to correctly locate the role and the appropriate configuration. These are required both when run from a script and from inside Visual Studio. They are:

  • -a The path to the Worker Role assembly. This is either an absolute path or is a relative path to the host execution directory.
  • -n The name of the Worker Role. This is the name it is listed under in the Cloud Service project. It is used to look up the settings for the role from the configuration file. Specifying an unknown role name will result in an error.
  • -t (optional) The title of the Worker Role. If the host is spawned into a new window this will be the title of that window. Useful for when there are multiple hosts running. If not specified the name of the role is used.
  • -c The path to the configuration. If this path is a file that file is assumed to be an Azure .cscfg and is parsed for the relevant settings (expected to be under the element identified by the role name). If it is a directory LightBlue looks for the file ServiceConfiguration.Local.cscfg in that directory.

The host process is installed by the command:

Install-Package LightBlue.Hosts -pre

This package is a solution level package and does not get installed into any particular project. The hosts do not directly reference the LightBlue assembly and are not strictly required to be of the same version although different versions are not guaranteed to be compatible.

Worker roles may also be fired up in the Azure emulator or deployed to actual Azure in the same way as any other worker role. This is detected automatically and the appropriate implementations of the LightBlue APIs are provided. No configuration changes are required between environments.

Configuring IoC

If you wish to use an IoC container with your worker role this can be added using the optional Autofac Integration.

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