Azure SDK for C++

This repository is for active development of the Azure SDK for C++. For consumers of the SDK we recommend visiting our developer docs.

Getting started

For the best development experience, we recommend developers use CMake projects in Visual Studio to view and build the source code together with its dependencies. You can also use any other text editor of your choice, such as VS Code, along with the command line for building your application with the SDK.

You can find additional information for specific libraries by navigating to the appropriate folder in the /sdk directory. See the README.md file located in the library's project folder, for example, the Azure Storage client library.

For API reference docs, tutorials, samples, quick starts, and other documentation, go to Azure SDK for C++ Developer Docs.

Download & Install the SDK

Here are some alternatives, from easiest to advanced, how you can get, build and integrate Azure SDK clients to your application.

CMake Project + Vcpkg - manifest mode

The easiest way to acquire the C++ SDK is leveraging the vcpkg package manager. You will need to install Git before getting started.

1. Create a CMake project

CMake will take care of cross-operating system support.

Visual Studio installs CMake without adding it to the path. You need to install CMake if you are not using Visual Studio or if you want to use a command line outside Visual Studio.

Visual Studio:

If you are using Visual Studio and you installed support for CMake, you can create a new CMake Project from Visual Studio, new project menu.

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Visual Studio Code:

Install the VSCode extensions: CMake and CMake Tools. Then, create folder for your project and open it with VSCode. Press F1 and type CMake: Quick Start, follow the steps to give a name to your project, to select a compiler and any other initial configuration.

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You can also manually create the root CMakeLists.txt with your own initial configuration and source.

2. Link the Vcpkg toolchain file to your CMake project

Azure SDK provides a CMake module that you can use for your application. You only need to create a folder called cmake-modules on the top level of your CMake project and copy AzureVcpkg.cmake to this folder.

The AzureVcpkg module supports three scenarios:

1. Getting and setting up Vcpkg automatically (default case). You can set the env var AZURE_SDK_DISABLE_AUTO_VCPKG to disable this behavior.
2. Automatically linking your application to an existing Vcpkg folder. Set the environment variable VCPKG_ROOT to the Vcpkg folder you want to link.
3. Manually setting a toolchain file with cmake command option. AzureVcpkg.cmake module will respect the option.

Add the next lines to your root CMakeLists.txt to use AzureVcpkg.cmake module:

# Add this lines on the top, before the call to `project(name VERSION 0.0.0)
list(APPEND CMAKE_MODULE_PATH "${CMAKE_CURRENT_SOURCE_DIR}/cmake-modules")
include(AzureVcpkg)
az_vcpkg_integrate()

3. Add Vcpkg manifest

Add a new file called vcpkg.json on the root of your CMake project and add the Azure SDK clients you want to use in your application. For example, the next manifest defines Azure Identity and Blobs.

{
    "name": "your-app-name",
    "version-string": "<Your app version like 1.0.0>", 
    "dependencies": [
        "azure-identity-cpp",
        "azure-storage-blobs-cpp"
    ]
}

4. Link Azure SDK libraries to your application

Add the next lines to your CMakeLists.txt file. It must be added after the cmake target name is defined.

find_package(azure-identity-cpp CONFIG REQUIRED)
find_package(azure-storage-blobs-cpp CONFIG REQUIRED)
target_link_libraries(quick-sample PRIVATE Azure::azure-identity Azure::azure-storage-blobs)

See the list of available SDK clients for C++ here

5. Generate project and compile

At this point, you can press F7 on Visual Studio or VSCode to generate and build the project. Or you can also run the following commands from a command line:

# Create a build folder (if there's not one already there)
mkdir build
cd build
cmake ..
cmake --build .

Using Vcpkg manifest makes easy to define multiple dependencies and delegate building them to Vcpkg.

CMake Project + fetch content

For this scenario, CMake will fetch the Azure SDK source code and make it part of your project. The SDK client libraries will be compiled at the same time as your application.

Follow the step 1 from above to create a CMake project first.

2. Define CMake fetch content

Add the following code to your root CMakeLists.txt file:

# Add this code before creating and linking your application

include(FetchContent)
FetchContent_Declare(
    azuresdk
    GIT_REPOSITORY      https://github.com/Azure/azure-sdk-for-cpp.git
    GIT_TAG             <Release Tag or Git-Commit-Here>
)
FetchContent_GetProperties(azuresdk)
if(NOT azuresdk_POPULATED)
    FetchContent_Populate(azuresdk)
    # Adding all Azure SDK libraries
    add_subdirectory(${azuresdk_SOURCE_DIR} ${azuresdk_BINARY_DIR} EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL)
    # Adding one Azure SDK Library only (Storage blobs)
    # add_subdirectory(${azuresdk_SOURCE_DIR}/sdk/storage/azure-storage-blobs ${azuresdk_BINARY_DIR} EXCLUDE_FROM_ALL)
endif()

3. Link Azure SDK libraries to your application

The only difference from the previous scenario is that you don't need to call find_package(), since the cmake targets are integrated to your project. So you only need:

# After creating the cmake target
target_link_libraries(quick-sample PRIVATE Azure::azure-identity Azure::azure-storage-blobs)

Note: You need to take care of getting the Azure SDK dependencies on your own. Either manually installing them or by integrating the source code to your project as well.

Use step 5 from previous scenario to generate and build your project.

This scenario requires extra manual configuration to get dependencies, but it is useful as an alternative when Vcpkg is not available

Other combinations

It should be possible to create your application without a CMake project. For example, manually cloning Azure SDK, building libraries and finally linking them to your application. However, this is considered an advanced scenario and it is not either described or maintained (The other scenarios described below are validated with CI pipelines).

Getting Beta Releases in Vcpkg

Official vcpkg registry may have beta versions of Azure SDK client libraries, up until a given library gets released as stable. After that, we don't publish post-first-stable beta releases of that library in the official registry.

If you are interested in both stable releases and post-first-stable beta releases, see Azure SDK Beta Vcpkg Registry. You can update the AzureVcpkg.cmake module to use the beta registry.

Using the SDK within your Application

The entry point for most scenarios when using the SDK will be a top-level client type corresponding to the Azure service. For example, sending requests to blob storage can be done via the Azure::Storage::Blobs::BlobClient API. All APIs on the client type send HTTP requests to the cloud service and return back an HTTP Response<T>.

Azure C++ SDK headers needed are located within the <azure> folder, with sub-folders corresponding to each service. Similarly, all types and APIs can be found within the Azure:: namespace. For example, to use functionality from Azure::Core, include the following header at the beginning of your application #include <azure/core.hpp>.

Here's an example application to help you get started:

#include <iostream>

// Include the necessary SDK headers
#include <azure/core.hpp>
#include <azure/storage/blobs.hpp>

// Add appropriate using namespace directives
using namespace Azure::Storage;
using namespace Azure::Storage::Blobs;

// Secrets should be stored & retrieved from secure locations such as Azure::KeyVault. For
// convenience and brevity of samples, the secrets are retrieved from environment variables.
std::string GetEndpointUrl() { return std::getenv("AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_URL"); }
std::string GetAccountName() { return std::getenv("AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME"); }
std::string GetAccountKey() { return std::getenv("AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT_KEY"); }

int main()
{
  std::string endpointUrl = GetEndpointUrl();
  std::string accountName = GetAccountName();
  std::string accountKey = GetAccountKey();

  try
  {
    auto sharedKeyCredential = std::make_shared<StorageSharedKeyCredential>(accountName, accountKey);

    auto blockBlobClient = BlockBlobClient(endpointUrl, sharedKeyCredential);

    // Create some data to upload into the blob.
    std::vector<uint8_t> data = {1, 2, 3, 4};
    Azure::Core::IO::MemoryBodyStream stream(data);

    Azure::Response<Models::UploadBlockBlobResult> response = blockBlobClient.Upload(stream);

    Models::UploadBlockBlobResult model = response.Value;
    std::cout << "Last modified date of uploaded blob: " << model.LastModified.ToString()
              << std::endl;
  }
  catch (const Azure::Core::RequestFailedException& e)
  {
    std::cout << "Status Code: " << static_cast<int>(e.StatusCode)
              << ", Reason Phrase: " << e.ReasonPhrase << std::endl;
    std::cout << e.what() << std::endl;
    return 1;
  }
  return 0;
}

Key Core concepts

Understanding the key concepts from the Azure Core library, which is leveraged by all client libraries is helpful in getting started, regardless of which Azure service you want to use.

The main shared concepts of Azure Core include:

• Accessing HTTP response details for the returned model of any SDK client operation, via Response<T>.
• Exceptions for reporting errors from service requests in a consistent fashion via the base exception type RequestFailedException.
• Abstractions for Azure SDK credentials (TokenCredential).
• Handling streaming data and input/output (I/O) via BodyStream along with its derived types.
• Polling long-running operations (LROs), via Operation<T>.
• Collections are returned via PagedResponse<T>.
• HTTP pipeline and HTTP policies such as retry and logging, which are configurable via service client specific options.
• Replaceable HTTP transport layer to send requests and receive responses over the network.

Response <T> Model Types

Many client library operations return the templated Azure::Core::Response<T> type from the API calls. This type let's you get the raw HTTP response from the service request call the Azure service APIs make, along with the result of the operation to get more API specific details. This is the templated T operation result which can be extracted from the response, using the Value field.

  // Azure service operations return a Response<T> templated type.
  Azure::Response<Models::BlobProperties> propertiesResponse = blockBlobClient.GetProperties();

  // You can get the T, from the returned Response<T>,
  // which is typically named with a Result suffix in the type name.
  Models::BlobProperties propertiesModel = propertiesResponse.Value;

  // Now you can look at API specific members on the result object that is returned.
  std::cout << "The size of the blob is: " << propertiesModel.BlobSize << std::endl;

Long Running Operations

Some operations take a long time to complete and require polling for their status. Methods starting long-running operations return Operation<T> types.

You can intermittently poll whether the operation has finished by using the Poll() method inside a loop on the returned Operation<T> and track progress of the operation using Value(), while the operation is not done (using IsDone()). Your per-polling custom logic can go in that loop, such as logging progress. Alternatively, if you just want to wait until the operation completes, you can use PollUntilDone().

  std::string sourceUri = "<a uri to the source blob to copy>";

  // Typically, long running operation APIs have names that begin with Start.
  StartBlobCopyOperation operation = blockBlobClient.StartCopyFromUri(sourceUri);

  // Waits for the operation to finish, checking for status every 1 second.
  auto copyResponse = operation.PollUntilDone(std::chrono::milliseconds(1000));
  auto propertiesModel = copyResponse.Value;

  // Now you can look at API specific members on the result object that is returned.
  if (propertiesModel.CopySource.HasValue())
  {
    std::cout << "The source of the copied blob is: " << propertiesModel.CopySource.Value()
              << std::endl;
  }

Interacting with Azure SDK for C++

Static SDK members should not be accessed and SDK functions should not be called before the static initialization phase is finished.

Visual Studio - CMakeSettings.json

When building your application via Visual Studio, you can create and update a CMakeSettings.json file and include the following properties to let Visual Studio know where the packages are installed and which triplet needs to be used:

{
  "configurations": [
    {
        "cmakeToolchain": "<path to vcpkg repo>/vcpkg/scripts/buildsystems/vcpkg.cmake",
        "variables": [
        {
          "name": "VCPKG_TARGET_TRIPLET",
          "value": "x64-windows",
          "type": "STRING"
        }
      ]
    }
  ]
}

Azure Requirements

To call Azure services, you must first have an Azure subscription. Sign up for a free trial or use your MSDN subscriber benefits.

Packages available

Each service might have a number of libraries available. These libraries follow the Azure SDK Design Guidelines for C++ and share a number of core features such as HTTP retries, logging, transport protocols, authentication protocols, etc., so that once you learn how to use these features in one client library, you will know how to use them in other client libraries. You can learn about these shared features at Azure::Core.

The client libraries can be identified by the naming used for their folder, package, and namespace. Each will start with azure, followed by the service category, and then the name of the service. For example azure-storage-blobs.

For a complete list of available packages, please see the latest available packages page.

NOTE: If you need to ensure your code is ready for production we strongly recommend using one of the stable, non-beta libraries.

Vcpkg

The following SDK library releases are available on vcpkg:

• azure-core-cpp
• azure-identity-cpp
• azure-security-attestation-cpp
• azure-security-keyvault-certificates-cpp
• azure-security-keyvault-keys-cpp
• azure-security-keyvault-secrets-cpp
• azure-storage-blobs-cpp
• azure-storage-files-datalake-cpp
• azure-storage-files-shares-cpp
• azure-storage-queues-cpp

NOTE: In case of getting linker errors when consuming the SDK on Windows, make sure that vcpkg triplet being consumed matches the CRT link flags being set for your app or library build. See also MSVC_USE_STATIC_CRT build flag.

OpenSSL Version

Several packages within the Azure SDK for C++ use the OpenSSL library. By default, the Azure SDK will use whatever the most recent version of OpenSSL is within the VCPKG repository.

Using a specific version of OpenSSL

If you need to use a specific version of OpenSSL, you can use the vcpkg custom ports feature to specify the version of OpenSSL to use. For example, if you want to use OpenSSL 1.1.1, you should create a folder named vcpkg-custom-ports next to to your vcpkg.json file.

Navigate to your clone of the vcpkg vcpkg repo and execute "git checkout 3b3bd424827a1f7f4813216f6b32b6c61e386b2e" - this will reset your repo to the last version of OpenSSL 1.1.1 in vcpkg. Then, copy the contents of the ports/openssl folder from the vcpkg repo to the vcpkg-custom-ports folder you created earlier:

cd <your vcpkg repo>
git checkout 3b3bd424827a1f7f4813216f6b32b6c61e386b2e
cd ports
cp -r openssl <the location of the vcpkg-custom-ports directory listed above>

This will copy the port information for OpenSSL 1.1.1n to your vcpkg-custom-ports directory.

Once that is done, you can install the custom port of OpenSSL 1.1.1n using the vcpkg tool:

vcpkg install --overlay-ports=<path to the vcpkg-custom-ports above>

If you are building using CMAKE, you can instruct CMAKE to apply the overlay ports using the following command line switches:

vcpkg -DVCPKG_MANIFEST_MODE=ON -DVCPKG_OVERLAY_PORTS=<path to the vcpkg-custom-ports above> -DVCPKG_MANIFEST_DIR=<path to the directory containing the vcpkg.json file>

In addition, if you need to consume OpenSSL from a dynamic linked library/shared object, you can set the VCPKG triplet to reflect that you want to build the library with dynamic entries. Set the VCPKG_you can set the environment variable to x64-windows-static or x64-windows-dynamic depending on whether you want to use the static or dynamic version of OpenSSL. Similarly you can use the x64-linux-dynamic and x64-linux-static triplet to specify consumption of libraries as a shared object or dynamic.

Using the system package manager to install OpenSSL

If you are using a Linux distribution that uses the system package manager to install libraries, you can use the system package manager to install OpenSSL.

The vcpkg team has a feature which allows you to use the system package manager to install dependencies.

Need help

• For reference documentation visit the Azure SDK for C++ documentation.
• For tutorials, samples, quick starts and other documentation, visit Azure for C++ Developers.
• File an issue via GitHub Issues.

Navigating the repository

Main branch

The main branch has the most recent code with new features and bug fixes. It does not represent latest released beta or GA SDK.

Release branches (Release tagging)

For each package we release there will be a unique Git tag created that contains the name and the version of the package to mark the commit of the code that produced the package. This tag will be used for servicing via hotfix branches as well as debugging the code for a particular beta or stable release version. Format of the release tags are <package-name>_<package-version>. For more information please see our branching strategy.

Contributing

For details on contributing to this repository, see the contributing guide.

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, view Microsoft's CLA.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repositories using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Additional Helpful Links for Contributors

Many people all over the world have helped make this project better. You'll want to check out:

• What are some good first issues for new contributors to the repo?
• How to build and test your change
• How you can make a change happen!
• Frequently Asked Questions (FAQ) and Conceptual Topics in the detailed Azure SDK for C++ wiki.

Reporting security issues and security bugs

Security issues and bugs should be reported privately, via email, to the Microsoft Security Response Center (MSRC) secure@microsoft.com. You should receive a response within 24 hours. If for some reason you do not, please follow up via email to ensure we received your original message. Further information, including the MSRC PGP key, can be found in the Security TechCenter.

License

Azure SDK for C++ is licensed under the MIT license.

Trademarks

This project may contain trademarks or logos for projects, products, or services. Authorized use of Microsoft trademarks or logos is subject to and must follow Microsoft's Trademark & Brand Guidelines. Use of Microsoft trademarks or logos in modified versions of this project must not cause confusion or imply Microsoft sponsorship. Any use of third-party trademarks or logos are subject to those third-party's policies.