Steve Spencer's Blog

In my previous post I showed you how to create a flat file decoding Logic App. When I first tested this I used URL generated when I first saved the Logic App to create a post command using the compose feature of fiddler.

The body of the message contained a single cvs row that I wanted to debug and I was hoping to see the response containing the xml representation of the csv file.

When I submitted the request, fiddler displayed an 502 error – Bad Gateway

This wasn’t very helpful and I needed to understand what had gone wrong.

Navigating to the Logic App in the Azure Portal I noticed that the Overview blade showed the runs for the Logic App

Clicking the failed run opened a new blade in the portal which showed my Logic App and it failing at the Flat File Decoding stage

Clicking the Flat File Decode caused it to expand and show me a more detailed (and useful) error

The error told me that the Flat File Decode couldn’t find the CR/LF at the end of the line. As I’d put a single line of text and no CR/LF the decoding failed.

I repeated the POST, this time with the CR/LF at the end of the body and the Logic App worked correctly and the correct xml representation of the csv was displayed in the body of the response.

[Update: 5th Aug 2018 – This post is still relevant especially the integration account, schemas and maps and I  have written a new blog that builds on this one and integrates into SQL  -  Using Azure Logic Apps to Import CSV to SQL Server]

A lot of companies require the transfer of files in order to transact business and there is always a need to translate these files from one format to another. Logic Apps provides a straight forward way to build serverless components that provide the integration points into your systems. This post is going to look at Logic apps enterprise integration to convert a multi-record CSV file into and XML format. Most of the understanding for this came from the following post:

https://seroter.wordpress.com/2016/09/09/trying-out-standard-and-enterprise-templates-in-azure-logic-apps/

Logic Apps can be created in Visual Studio or directly in the Azure Portal using the browser. Navigate to the azure portal https://portal.azure.com click the plus button at the top of the right hand column, then Web + Mobile then Logic App

Complete the form and click Create

This will take a short while to complete. Once complete you can select the logic app from you resource list to start to use it.

If you look at my recent list

You can see the logic app I’ve just created but you will also see my previous logic app and you will also notice that there is also an integration account and an Azure function. These are both required in order to create the necessary schemas and maps required to translate the CSV file to XML.

The integration account stores the schemas and maps and the Azure function provides some code that is used to translate the CSV to XML.

An integration account is created the same way as a logic app. The easiest way is to click on the plus symbol and then search for integration

Click on Integration Account then Create

Complete the form

Then Create. Once created you can start to add your schemas and maps

You will now need to jump into Visual Studio to create your maps and schemas. You will need to install the Logic Apps Integration Tools for Visual Studio

You will need to create a schema for the CSV file and a schema for the XML file. These two blog posts walk you through creating a flat file schema for a CSV file and also a positional file

I created the following two schemas

Once you have create the two schemas you will need to create a map which allows you to map the fields from one schema to the fields in the other schema.

In order to upload the map you will need to build the project in Visual Studio to build the xslt file.

The schemas and map file project can be found in my repository on GitHub

To upload the files to the integration account, go back to the Azure portal where you previously selected the integration account, click Schemas then Add

Complete the form, select the schema file from your Visual Studio project and click OK. Repeat this for both schema files. You do the same thing for the map file. You will need to navigate to your bin/Debug (or Release) folder to find the xslt file that was built. Your integration account should now show your schemas and maps as uploaded

There’s one more thing to do before you can create your logic app. In order to process the transformation some code is required in an Azure Function. This is standard code and can be created by clicking the highlighted link on this page. Note: If you haven’t used Azure Functions before then you will also need to click the other link first.

This creates you a function with the necessary code required to perform the transformation

You are now ready to start your logic app. Click on the Logic App you created earlier. This will display a page where you can select a template with which to create your app.

Close this down as you need to link your integration account to your logic app.

Click on Settings, then Integration Account and pick the integration Account where you previously uploaded the Schemas and Map files. Save this and return to the logic app template screen.

Select VETER Pipeline

Then “Use This Template”. This is the basis for your transformation logic. All you need to do now is to complete each box.

In Flat File Decoding & XML Validation, pick the CSV schema

In the transform XML

Select the function container, the function and the map file

All we need to do now is to return the transformed xml in the response message. Click “Add an Action” on Transform XML and search for Response.

Pick the Transformed XML content as the body of the response. Click save and the URL for the logic app will be populated in the Request flow

We now have a Request that takes the CSV in the body and it returns the XML transform in the body of the response. You can test this using a tool like PostMan or Fiddler to send in the request to the request URL above.

There is also a test CSV file in my repository on GitHub which can be used to test this.

My next post covers how I diagnosed a fault with this Logic App

Last month Microsoft announced the Azure App Service (http://azure.microsoft.com/blog/2015/03/24/announcing-azure-app-service/). The App Service incorporates Web (sites) Apps and Mobile apps and introduces two new services: API Apps and Logic Apps.

API Apps allows you to build small RESTful services that can be combined together with Web, Mobile and/or Logic apps to build your application.

There is new tooling for Visual Studio (http://blogs.msdn.com/b/visualstudio/archive/2015/03/24/introducing-the-azure-api-apps-tools-for-visual-studio-2013.aspx) to help you build API apps, as well as providing the ability to debug your API App when it is deployed in Azure (http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-dotnet-remotely-debug-api-app/).

API Apps are documented using Swagger (http://swagger.io/) and there is a UI in the portal to allow you to run the app with sample data. To access the Swagger UI click the API App URL in the portal and add \swagger to the end. Click on the API method you are interested in and then click the Action button (POST in my example below).

This expands out to allow you to exercise the API.

An example API is documented here: https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-dotnet-create-api-app/

There is also a market place for API Apps which include API connectors for Office 365, Service Bus, OneDrive, Drop Box and various others. You need to install them as API apps before they can be used in other apps. All authentication to the services is done in the API app creation process and this therefore makes it easier to wire them together as the authentication is handled for you. Connectors can be used to trigger Logic Apps and also as Actions. Details of this along with the list of available connectors is here (http://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/documentation/articles/app-service-logic-use-biztalk-connectors/)

I'm going to blog in more detail about logic apps later, but for now here are a couple of tips for API Apps:

1. In order to enable swagger and to ensure that your APIs that return data are documented correctly there is some additional code that needs to be added. This is documented here: http://blogs.msdn.com/b/hosamshobak/archive/2015/03/31/logic-app-with-simple-api-app-with-inputs-and-outputs.aspx
2. When you create an API app, especially if you created it from the market place (e.g. Azure Storage Blob Connector, Service Bus Connector etc) you are asked for configuration at the time of creation. Once it is created, it is not obvious where to find the configuration. In the new Azure Portal, Browse to API Apps and click on the one you want to reconfigure. In the Essentials panel that appears click on the API app host link. Click the settings Icon followed by Application Settings. Scroll down and any settings for the API App will be visible and can be changed. This is useful if you need to remember which service bus topic and subscription are configured for example.