Tables not working with Storage Emulator and NodeJS

Question

I'm just getting started with NodeJS on Azure. So far it works very straight forward with nice getting started tutorials. However, I can't get Tables working following the tutorial at https://www.windowsazure.com/en-us/develop/nodejs/how-to-guides/table-services/

This suggests that for running locally (using the Storage Emulator) you don't have to configure anything. Which is not the case. My application returned an Internal Server Error 500 "Error: connect ECONNREFUSED". The reason was that the Storage Emulator was not running, which in turn, had as reason that I was missing SQL Server on my system. So now I have installed SQL Server 2008 R2 Express edition. Now, the storage emulator runs fine.

Still, I can't create or access Tables. from my NodeJS application. I get an error "Could not use table: InvalidInput". I guess it has to do with access to the SQL server, or non initialized SQL server. But I have no clue how to figure this out. Any ideas?

My NodeJS app itself works fine when deployed to Azure, so this really has to do with the Storage Emulator. I also installed Azure Storage Explorer, in which I can create tables and entities locally without problem.

Answer 1

Hi,

Based on my understand, the error "Could not use table: InvalidInput" occurs when you trying to use a operation that not supported by table storage service, i guess you made some mistakes with your code, how do you write Node.js application, try to post your code to help us to fix your problems.

Thank you.

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Answer 2

This is the code I have right now. It already fails when trying to create a table.

var http = require('http');
var azure = require('azure');

var port = process.env.port || 1337;

var tableName = 'tasklist';
var tableService = azure.createTableService();

http.createServer(function (req, res) {
  tableService.createTableIfNotExists(tableName, tableCreatedOrExists);

  function tableCreatedOrExists(error)  {
    res.writeHead(200, { 'Content-Type': 'text/plain' });
  
    if(error === null) {
      res.end('Using table ' + tableName + '\r\n');
    } else {
      res.end('Could not use table: ' + error.code + ', ' + error.message);
    }
  };
}).listen(port);

What may have to do with the issue too is that I got errors when installing azure via npm:

PS C:\node\helloworld\HelloWorldWorker> npm install azure
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/azure
npm http 503 https://registry.npmjs.org/azure
npm ERR! registry error parsing json
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/sax
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/qs
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/log
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/xmlbuilder
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/mime
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/dateformat/1.0.2-1.2.3
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/xml2js
npm http 503 https://registry.npmjs.org/qs
npm ERR! registry error parsing json
npm http 503 https://registry.npmjs.org/sax
npm ERR! registry error parsing json
npm http 503 https://registry.npmjs.org/xmlbuilder
npm ERR! registry error parsing json
npm http 503 https://registry.npmjs.org/log
npm ERR! registry error parsing json
npm http 503 https://registry.npmjs.org/mime
npm ERR! registry error parsing json
npm http 503 https://registry.npmjs.org/xml2js
npm ERR! registry error parsing json
azure@0.5.2 ./node_modules/azure
├── dateformat@1.0.2-1.2.3
├── xmlbuilder@0.3.1
├── log@1.3.0
├── mime@1.2.5
├── xml2js@0.1.13
├── qs@0.4.2
└── sax@0.3.5

Answer 3

I just tried again to install azure with npm, now it works fine.

PS C:\node\helloworld\HelloWorldWorker> npm -v
1.1.0-3
PS C:\node\helloworld\HelloWorldWorker> npm install azure
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/azure
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/azure
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/sax
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/log
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/xmlbuilder
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/qs
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/dateformat/1.0.2-1.2.3
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/xml2js
npm http GET https://registry.npmjs.org/mime
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/sax
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/log
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/xmlbuilder
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/qs
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/xml2js
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/dateformat/1.0.2-1.2.3
npm http 304 https://registry.npmjs.org/mime
azure@0.5.2 ./node_modules/azure
├── xmlbuilder@0.3.1
├── dateformat@1.0.2-1.2.3
├── mime@1.2.5
├── xml2js@0.1.13
├── log@1.3.0
├── qs@0.4.2
└── sax@0.3.5

However, I still get the exact same response, "Could not use table: InvalidInput, One of the request inputs is not valid."

Answer 4

Hi,

You code looks good, and but i am wondering how do you configure your storage settings, and where does this error was thrown, create TableService or create Table failed?

---

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Answer 5

I have not done any storage configuration. I have left the Web.config as it is. From the tutorial:

"If you are running against the storage emulator on the local machine, you do not need to configure a connection string, as it will be configured automatically. You can continue to the next section."

When I click the system tray icon of the Emulator, and I click on the Storage Emulator UI, everything seems to run fine, but there are no configuration options. Do I maybe miss some configuration?

Answer 6

Hi Jos,

Sorry to hear you've run into trouble. Are you running your example directly in node.exe, or through the compute emulator? The how-to assumes you first used the PowerShell tools to create a hosted service and a WebRole and that you're running in the emulator.

If you are doing it that way, then you'll notice that the Web.config creates an "EMULATED" environment variable, which enables the azure package to work without specifying storage access settings. It should all work seamlessly.

If you want to try using the azure package directly with node.exe without going through the compute emulator, make sure you manually set the "EMULATED" environment variable. 

Thanks,
-Yavor

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If this answers your question, please mark as answered.
Yavor Georgiev, Program Manager | Azure App Platform Team | Microsoft