In a previous post I had developed a simple Microsoft Azure EventHubs Service Gateway for Arduino and Netduino devices which required Internet Information Server(IIS). Running IIS in some home environments could be a bit awkward so I have got a basic light weight version going which is hosted in a self installing Windows Service. The gateway supports four command line parameters.(The install and uninstall must be run as administrator otherwise the requested process will fail)

• Install – install the service
• Uninstall – uninstalls the service
• Debug – runs the service in interactive mode
• Name – allows you to specify the name of the service in the Services Manager.

The code does some basic logging to the Windows Event log and can be configured to start automatically when the computer starts.

The configuration file has two settings

<appSettings>
<add key="Microsoft.ServiceBus.ConnectionString" value="YourConnectionStringGoesHere" />
<add key="Microsoft.ServiceBus.EventHub" value="myhomemonitor" />
<add key="baseAddress" value="http://your.URL.goes.Here:8080/" />
</appSettings>


The code is based on the self installing service sample code that ships with the Wix# toolkit.

try
{
   string connectionString = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Microsoft.ServiceBus.ConnectionString"];
   string eventHubName = ConfigurationManager.AppSettings["Microsoft.ServiceBus.EventHub"];

   NamespaceManager namespaceManager = NamespaceManager.CreateFromConnectionString(connectionString);

   EventHubClient client = EventHubClient.Create(eventHubName);

   EventData data = new EventData(request.Content.ReadAsByteArrayAsync().Result);

   // Set user properties if needed
   data.Properties.Add("UploadedAtUTC", DateTime.UtcNow.ToString("yyyy-MM-dd HH:mm:ss"));
   data.Properties.Add("UploadedBy", "devMobileAzureEventHubGateway");

   client.Send(data);
}
catch (Exception ex)
{
   eventLog.WriteEntry(string.Format("Application initialisation failed {0}", ex.Message), EventLogEntryType.Error);
}

The Azure EventHub Service Gateway Code V0.5 is a bit rough but I will enhance it as time allows. First steps will be improving logging then creating a WIX# based installer.