Boost your local development with Dev Container templates for Azure SQL

Key Takeaways

and let's say I want to do some python like I want to build a python app or maybe someone else did a python app and I want to run it on my machine but I don't have python so you say I could take one of those Dev container so I'm assuming I need Docker install or like pman something on my machine to like run that container but I will just create that environment and then like go inside to code in this episode of open at Microsoft I have Carlos with me and we'll be talking about a fantastic tool for developer that include a database you definitely don't want to miss that very happy to have you on the show Carlos so today we'll be talking about a version you started of a Dev container but before we start digging about like that specific version with like an SQL database very excited about that by the way uh but maybe let's clarify what's a Dev container yeah absolutely so thanks for having me here in the show Frank very excited so let's jump into my screen I would like to start by here so if you want to learn all things about Dev containers you can simply go to containers. deev we'll include those links in in the description of this video but from this website you can understand everything but let's start with the basics what is a depth container it's a containerized environment that includes the libraries includes the tools includes the codebase and even can include the database so everything you need for your application to be functional in a containerized environment running everywhere you can have it with that containers and everything works by a metadata file that is called the dev container. Json it's a a definition where you will enrich the file with all the things you need uh here's an example how the dep container uh can be used in the Inner Loop and the and also the outer loop because as I mentioned you can have everything that you need for your application to be functional so you can have a dep container for your local environment with just the basic for your local development and you can have for example a nor Dev container for your interogation testing with a very specific set of tools or things inside the dev container that can be helpful so yeah it's it's very powerful and that's why we introduce a new template so let me show you the templates before I jump into the templates for Azure CLE uh let's go to available templates here in this project and you will find that the project is open source by the way it has uh very large collection of templates so we're looking at this we were thinking like okay it would be a good opportunity to introduce a new template into this collection that was built by the SQL Developer experiences team that is specifically for developers that wants to use asro sqle database so just before you you uh you jump on on your version Let Me recap just to make sure I understand maybe clarify like use case where it could be useful for like developer so let's say I'm on it works on any platform right so I'm on Windows I'm on Linux it works and let's say I want to do some python like I want to build a python app or maybe someone else did a python app and I want to run it on my machine but I don't have python so you say I could take one of those Dev container so I'm assuming I need do install or like pman something on my machine to like run that container but I will just create that environment and then like go inside to code and like all what I need will be there is it yeah yeah that's right actually I have an example of that in the demo so you will see it in like we were prepare exent I love it yeah oh before we jump into the the the demo I would like to go to this repo this is the the asual SQL DV repo so these are the templates we created and this is something we would like from the community we would like to get some feedback if you want to contribute to this project is easy as just going to to the repo and reading the instructions or you can reach out and we can help you so this is the idea this is what we buil specifically for aqal database as you can see it will be a local environment running everywhere as you said Frank and it will use vs code oh excuse me use vs code it would use GitHub because all the all the template and everything need store in verion control and it would use Docker so it will come with a database but also will come with the preferred language you want to use for your application so it can it can be node it can be net it can be Python and we're working on new templates for go and rust so you have plenty of options and you have a way to communicate your use your database and interact between the data and the app application and even more we introduce some tools because remember you can install whatever you want on those Dev containers so we introduce some tools or CIS that will help developers to transition from that local environment to the cloud in this case it's the Azure as you can see GitHub actions will use to will be can be helpful to land your application in static Azure static web apps or Azure database so that's the idea to make local development easier but even easier the transition there is is plenty of documentation about this project you can find it here we explain all the details everything that it's included so as you can see it's a lot right and even a template here how can get started so if you want to try this out feel free to use the links or reach out if you want more information so let's see this in action right so let's that's that's that's where we are here right exactly let's imagine let's imagine as you said right I'm a python developer so I have everything ready in my local machine for python I can use Python every day but you share this this Library app with me and it happens to be node so it's using node I don't have that node on my machine so I have to go to the painful process to install node to install developer exactly so it's it's not comen right so you will be spending time that you don't need to spend and for example I have the back end here the front end right so if I do if I navigate to the back end of my application and then I do node uh let's see index.js what happens is that I don't have Noe right so it doesn't work out of the out of box it doesn't work so I'm in trouble so here is where Dev containers can be very helpful and even though in this case you need a database because you're creating an API so you need something to to where you will be storing your your your data so let's let's use Dev containers um the first thing you have to do is that you have to have the dev containers extension installed for sure so if we search here for Dev containers I already have the extension I already have Docker machine I already have vs code so I'm ready to go um there is two ways you can um add a Dev container configuration file here one is by using this button that I really like and then simply as ADD Dev container configuration file you will see what happens when I click this it ask me if I want to do it on my workspace or if I have um um a project that is already on on on Source control so we are going to select Source control because that's the beauty of this if I add the dev container here it will be part of my project so whenever picks this repo will be able to use it without doing anything um so here this list once again is large it these are the templates that I show you on the website so let's go here and do Azure CLE because we're interested on Azure CLE and I'm going to pick the one for node okay I'm going to go yeah so we have oh that was too fast by the way uh as you can see when I do ayle uh let's do it again Azure CLE you see that these are templates that we have available right now and it says Microsoft are templates that are created by the community there are templates that are created by other teams Microsoft these was created by us so I'm going to choose node I'm going to go with the default here and this option is just to add more things remember what I mentioned it comes with libraries tools clis whatever you want so I have options to even modify these template that already include some clis so I'm going to skip it because I want to go simple and notice what happened wow that was very fast so what happened was like BS code is identifying this and saying yeah I see that you have a Dev container convention file let's re open this project in a container so it's no longer going to be running on my machine so we will solve that problem like it works on my machine right so it was working on your machine Frank but it wasn't on mine because I didn't have node so this is how we solve it and um it just a matter to click here and I'll be all set but let's just at least check these configuration file let's let's explore first let's let's go to a file explorer for a second and you see that I have a back end and front end right those are the two folders I had before but I have all these new folders that are flag in Version Control already and these files are part of the template that uh we downloaded if you will so from here this is the metadata file I mentioned I'm not going to go into this in very detail because it's um it's fairly large but I can tell that in here we are setting a specific configurations for example for um extensions here's the msql extension so whenever you use this it comes with the connection string already set so you can connect to a database uh you can see that that's not the only extension depending on the language will include this the extensions that will be helpful for your project so in this case it's not so I have one for lint for code mpm blah blah blah lots of stuff um as I said we create a database for you so we include a postcreate command that's going to run just once after the container is INS started it's on features and more stuff so as you can see it's very complete so next step here is for me to rebuild this or reopening a container I already did that because it takes like two minutes depending on your or where you running to build the containerized environment for you I'm done with that so let's jump in here and as you can see this is what happened so after I like click the reopen button it goes through the process of reading that metadata file and then creating a database installing the tools and everything for you so I don't have to do anything and I can just start my project right away so that's what we were looking for right Frank like yes exactly start really quick great so now we are as we can see in the bottom left it says that we are in like a a container right now so and all the all the description everything that was specified in that file is now part of the container and we see the code word there and now we have the tool we need to continue in a database yeah that's right the database that's very important thank you for that so if I click on here this is the extension that comes as part of the the template right uh so right here I have this database called Library it's a sample database it has data and everything so that means that I can run my project so I already did that I have my back end running I have my front end here so let's run the front end really quick just to show you that this depth container contains a working environment so from here I can add myself or let's add Frank as let's do Frank really quick here with this very distinguished outdors so it's working so if we jump back to our container right environment and we quer the database really quick um let's see oh no this is not my container right sorry this is my containerized environment and let's run a query for the tools the author table really quick you will see that Frank was added so it's a local environment that can run everywhere it includes everything and once you are ready to do the next step you'll have the tools that will help you to do the transition to aure so that's kind of the idea here and I love that because having a database in a container I think for developer it's it's so amazing because when you're done with it it just vanish and you free up some resources exactly having the database running all the time on your machine then that eats resources so now you not only you can have all the toolings like the SDK and everything you need for like coding in a specific language but package with the database that's great yeah so all of that it's open source it's available right you saw show us the repo before yeah here's the repo and we include of course the links and this is part of um let's say a larger project is the dev containers project so everything is open source so feel free to contribute and open issues or ask question we want the community to be part of this for sure right now and so right now you have net python I forgot the type uh no yeah so node. net. net Aspire for sure and we have python so we are working on go Rost or whatever the community thinks it's useful for them yeah we're open to suggestions yeah well thank you a lot I hope people join H go have a try to that repo I definitely did and I loved it so it's an invite people you should definitely go there and try it it's amazing thank you a lot Carlos for this show today it was great thank you thank you so much rank