In the previous chapter, you learned about the Razor templating engine, the components of a Razor template solution, and the differences between using a static model class and the SQLite database model, before moving on to learning how to build a BookLibrary mobile solution using the power of Razor templates and how to use and define BookItem database models within your application.

You then learned how to incorporate the SQLite-net NuGet package that you will use in order to create a BookDatabase interface and class. As part of learning this, you also learned about a number of class instance methods that will communicate with our SQLite database so that you can create, update, retrieve, and delete book items. Lastly, you learned how to create the necessary Razor template pages that will integrate with our BookItem data model and how to implement additional HTML tags within our style.css file, as well as how to implement the necessary class instance methods within the WebViewController class.

In this chapter, you'll learn about the Microsoft Azure App Services platform, and how you can leverage this platform to create your cloud-based databases using RESTful web service APIs that will be used to handle all communication between the TrackMyWalks mobile application. You will then set up and configure a Microsoft Azure app service in order to create a mobile app service, data connection, SQL Server database, and WalkEntries table. You will also learn how to incorporate the Newtonsoft.Json NuGet package, as well as modify the WalkDataModel data model.

Next, you will create a RestWebservice interface and class, which will include a number of class instance methods that will be used to communicate with our TrackMyWalks SQL Server database so you can perform CRUD operations to create, update, retrieve, and delete walk entries.

You will then modify the BaseViewModel class to include an AzureDatabase property to our RestWebService class, as well as make some changes to the underlying code-behind files that will communicate with our SQL Server database.

Finally, you will update the user interface for the WalkEntryPage to include an ActivityIndicator, which will display information to the user whenever a walk item is being saved to the database. You will also make changes to the WalkEntryPageViewModel to initialize properties for communicating with the ActivityIndicator.

This chapter will cover the following topics:

• Setting up our TrackMyWalks app to use Microsoft Azure App Services
• Incorporating the Json.Net NuGet package to our TrackMyWalks solution
• Updating the WalkDataModel database model for our TrackMyWalks app
• Creating and implementing a RestWebService interface and class using C#
• Updating the BaseViewModel class to use our RestWebService class
• Updating the WalkEntryPageViewModel to use our RestWebService class
• Updating the WalksMainPageViewModel to use our RestWebService class
• Updating the WalksMainPage to use the updated ViewModel
• Launching the TrackMyWalks app using the iOS simulator