Introduction

In previous chapters, you learned how to create Azure Functions right from the Azure Management portal. Here are a few of the features that we encountered:

• We can quickly create a function just by selecting one of the built-in templates provided by the Azure Functions runtime.
• Developers need not worry about writing plumbing code or understanding how to work with the frameworks.
• Configuration changes can be made right within the UI using the standard editor.

Despite the advantages provided by the Azure Management portal, moving over from a familiar integrated development environment (IDE) to something new can prove to be a daunting task for developers. To ease this transition, the Microsoft team has come up with a few tools that help developers to integrate Azure Functions into Visual Studio, with the aim of leveraging critical IDE features that are imperative for accelerating development efforts. Here are a few of the features:

• Developers benefit from IntelliSense support.
• The ability to debug code line by line.
• The values of variables can be quickly viewed while debugging the application.
• Integration with version control systems such as Azure DevOps (formerly known as Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS)).

You'll learn about some of the preceding features in this chapter, and see how to integrate code with Azure DevOps in Chapter 12, Implementing and deploying continuous integration using Azure DevOps.