Change in Windows Azure API - Websites.Services.WebEntities.ConnStringInfo

Automation is the bomb. I don’t like having to do something that can be automated more than once, so usually if I’m asked a second time (and I have a strong suspicion that I’ll be asked to do it again) I try to script it. This is very true of Windows Azure Web Apps and thankfully, it’s also easily facilitated.

I just fired up some old Azure PowerShell scripts I had (from mid-2013, I believe) that had a call that looked a little like the following:

# create and configure the connection string information 
$appConnString = New-Object Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Commands.Utilities.Websites.Services.WebEntities.ConnStringInfo;
$appConnString.Name=“PersonContext”;
$appConnString.ConnectionString=$appDBConnStr;
$appConnString.Type=“SQLAzure”; 

Essentially, it’s just creating an instance of the ConnStringInfo object so I can associate it with my site. However, when I tried running it I started getting the following error:

New-Object : Cannot find type [Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Management.Utilities.Websites.Services.WebEntities.ConnStringInfo]:
verify that the assembly containing this type is loaded.

Then, because the object couldn’t be created, I got errors trying to set each of the properties, like, “The property ‘ConnectionString’ cannot be found on this object. Verify that the property exists and can be set.”

Then I noticed that the script really mustn’t have been run in some time, as this is the current namespace for the class:

Microsoft.WindowsAzure.Commands.Utilities.Websites.Services.WebEntities.ConnStringInfo

Websites was moved in late 2013 to the Commands namespace. You won’t likely run into it unless you dig up an old script that hasn’t run in a while, but the difference is subtle and might be tricky to spot.

Hope this helps, and happy coding!