Azure REST API Documentation

Introduction to Azure REST APIs

Azure REST APIs provide a programmatic interface to interact with Azure services. They allow you to create, manage, and monitor your Azure resources using standard HTTP requests.

These APIs are stateless and use standard HTTP methods like GET, POST, PUT, DELETE, and PATCH.

Authentication and Authorization

Access to Azure resources is secured through Azure Active Directory (Azure AD). You can authenticate using various methods, including:

• Service Principals: Ideal for applications and services.
• Managed Identities: For Azure resources that need to access other Azure services.
• User Credentials: For interactive scenarios.

Once authenticated, authorization is handled via Role-Based Access Control (RBAC), assigning specific permissions to users or service principals.

Common Authentication Flow (Service Principal)

To obtain an access token using a service principal:

POST https://login.microsoftonline.com/{tenant}/oauth2/v2.0/token
Content-Type: application/x-www-form-urlencoded

grant_type=client_credentials&client_id={client_id}&client_secret={client_secret}&scope=https://management.azure.com/.default

The response will contain an access_token which you include in the Authorization header of your API requests:

Authorization: Bearer {access_token}

Resource Groups API

Resource Groups are logical containers for Azure resources.

List Resource Groups

Retrieves a list of all resource groups in the specified subscription.

Create or Update a Resource Group

Creates a new resource group or updates an existing one.

Request Body Example:

{
    "location": "eastus",
    "tags": {
        "environment": "production"
    }
}

Delete a Resource Group

Deletes a resource group and all its contained resources.

Virtual Machines API

Manage your Azure Virtual Machines.

List Virtual Machines

Lists all virtual machines in the current subscription.

Get a Virtual Machine

Retrieves the details of a specific virtual machine.

Storage Accounts API

Manage Azure Storage Accounts.

List Storage Accounts

Lists all storage accounts within a subscription.

App Services API

Manage Azure App Services (Web Apps, Function Apps, etc.).

List App Services

Lists all web apps in the specified subscription.

Management Plane vs. Data Plane

Azure APIs are broadly categorized into two planes:

• Management Plane: Used for managing Azure resources themselves (e.g., creating a VM, configuring a storage account). These APIs typically start with management.azure.com.
• Data Plane: Used for interacting with the data stored within Azure services (e.g., uploading a blob to a storage account, querying a Cosmos DB database). These APIs have service-specific endpoints.

Data Plane Examples

Data plane operations are service-specific. For example, interacting with Azure Blob Storage.

Uploading a Blob

This is a simplified example. Actual requests involve authentication via SAS tokens or other mechanisms and specific headers.

Request Body:

<Binary data of the file to upload>

SDKs and Tools

While you can interact directly with the REST APIs, Azure provides SDKs for various languages (e.g., .NET, Python, Java, JavaScript) and command-line tools (Azure CLI, Azure PowerShell) that simplify these interactions.

Using SDKs is often recommended for better abstraction, error handling, and productivity.