Wouldn’t it be great if you could have a function which generates resized images from every new image that gets uploaded in your Azure blob storage, without having to create a new app and manage the infrastructure to run it? Welcome to the era of Serverless Computing where, through a few lines of code, you can have this function up and running in a few minutes.

To do so, you need an Azure Blob Storage to store your images, and an Azure Functions app to write the few lines of code needed for this task to run.

Before we proceed, let’s start with the basics.

What is Serverless Computing?

As Martin Fowler states in his article about Serverless architectures:

“Serverless can also mean applications where some amount of server-side logic is still written by the application developer but unlike traditional architectures is run in stateless compute containers that are event-triggered, ephemeral (may only last for one invocation), and fully managed by a 3rd party”.

Serverless Computing benefits can be summarized as follows:

  • Reduced operational & development costs
  • Fast and easy scaling
  • Reduced packaging & deployment complexity
  • Easy scheduling & event processing
  • Reduced time to market / experimentation

For more info, I strongly encourage you to read the following posts:

What is Azure Functions?

Azure Functions is Microsoft Azure’s solution for running easily small pieces of code, or “functions,” in the cloud. You can write just the code you need for the problem at hand, without having to manage the infrastructure to run it. Key points are:

  • You can choose between a variety of languages such as C#, F#, Node.js, Python, PHP, batch, bash, or any executable one.
  • You pay only for the time spent running your code.
  • They support NuGet and NPM for external libraries, and provide a very easy way to leverage Azure services through triggers, which are ways to start execution of your code, and bindings, which are ways to simplify coding for input and output data.
  • Functions scale up or down based on demand.

You can read more here for an Azure Functions Overview.

Setup your Azure Storage Account

First of all, you will be needing a place to store your image files and, to this end, you may use Azure Blob Storage service, which is a service that stores unstructured data in the cloud as objects/blobs. Blob storage can store any type of text or binary data, such as documents, media files, or application installers. Blob storage is also referred to as object storage.

Create your Azure Blob Storage Account

To create an Azure Storage account through the portal click on New – Storage – Storage Account, fill in the form details and click on Create.

After your Storage Account is created, you can create two containers, gallery to upload your images and `gallery-resized` where the resized images will be written after the function processes each file:

The containers are now ready and you can manage them through Azure portal or Azure Storage Explorer, a standalone app from Microsoft that allows you to easily work with Azure Storage data on Windows, macOS and Linux.

Setup Azure Functions

Now that the Azure Blob Storage account service is in place, you need to create a new Azure Function that will be triggered when a new image is uploaded to the `gallery` container, and that will generate a resized image to the `gallery-resized` container.

Create Azure Functions App

Creating an Azure Functions app is very simple. Go to Azure portal, click on New and then from Compute category select Function App, and fill in the form details.

Key things to note:

  • Hosting plan has two options, Consumption and App Service plan. The Consumption plan lets you pay-per-execution and dynamically allocates resources based on your app’s load. App Service plan lets you use a predefined capacity allocation with predictable costs and scale.
  • Selecting a Storage Account allows you to automatically configure Azure Functions to have access to it.

Create Azure Function

To create a new Azure Function you need to go to your Azure Function app and follow these steps:

  • click on “+ New Function“;
  • select BlobTrigger-CSharp from template, as you need this function to be triggered every time a new image is uploaded in Azure Blob Storage container gallery;
  • name your function (ResizeImages);
  • set the trigger path to gallery/{blobname}.{blobextension}. This path would find a blob uploaded to gallery container and the value of the `blobname` and `blobextension` variables in function code would be imagename and jpg or png (more info on bindings can be found here);
  • set the storage account connection string and click Create.

Azure Functions Editor Overview

A new function is created and the default workspace is set.

  • Develop allows you to review the Code window.
  • Integrate allows you to set up triggers, inputs and outputs.
  • Manage allows you to enable, disable or delete your function and setup keys.
  • Monitor allows you to real-time monitor the execution of your function.
  • Logs display all the necessary info when you save your code.
  • Files allows you to upload and manage files.
  • Test allows you to setup a request body and check the output.

Code your function

In order to resize every image that is uploaded in the gallery container you may use the ImageResizer NuGet package. To have this NuGet package installed you need to add a `project.json` file, where you will declare the use of this package, using the following code:

{
"frameworks": {
  "net46":{
    "dependencies": {
      "ImageResizer": "4.0.5"
    }
  }
 }
}

When you click on Save, notice on the logs pane the Restoring packages and Starting NuGet restore traces.

Configure Outputs

Click on the Integrate tab, and in the Outputs section, click on +New Output, select Azure Blob Storage and set the output parameters:

  • outputBlob is the name of the parameter in the code for output binding to bind to.
  • path is the path within your storage account to which the blob will be written, `gallery-resized` is the container where your resized images will be written using the same name and extension as the original blob, plus w200 which is the 200px width.

Code

The actual code of the function is the following:

using ImageResizer;
using ImageResizer.ExtensionMethods;

public static void Run(Stream myBlob, string blobname, string blobextension, Stream outputBlob, TraceWriter log)
{
    log.Info($"C# Blob trigger function Processed blob\n Name:{blobname} \n Size: {myBlob.Length} Bytes");
    
    var instructions = new Instructions
    {
        Width = 200,
        Mode = FitMode.Carve,
        Scale = ScaleMode.Both
    };
    ImageBuilder.Current.Build(new ImageJob(myBlob, outputBlob, instructions));
}
  • the first two using statements are used to import the necessary namespaces from ImageResizer library;
  • Run is the method that is going to be executed every time a new image is uploaded;
  • myBlob, blobName and blobExtensions refer to the blob that is uploaded inthe gallery container and are defined in the Triggers section;
  • outputBlob refers to the image that will be resized and written to the gallery-resized container;
  • TraceWriter log is used to log output to your streaming logs.

Test

Now that you are all setup, you can test and monitor your function. You may upload an image to the gallery container, and then watch your function triggered in the logs pane and the output result to be written in gallery-resized container:

You can also test your function using the Test option, where you set the path for the file in the Request Body, watch your functions triggered and the Output result set to Status: 202 Accepted

Monitor

By clicking on the Monitor tab you gain access to a dashboard display info about every function’s execution, if it was successful or failed, when it ran and how long it took:

Another option is Live Event Stream, which can be accessed through the highlighted link in the red square. That link gives you access to real time event stream analytics, including details like:

  • Executions Started / Sec
  • Executions Completed / Sec
  • Executions Failed / Sec
  • Avg Execution Time (ms)

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