Question

I have a table in Azure Mobile Services. On the client side, how can I get the count of elements in the database that have the field “value” less than 100?

I am interested only in the count and not in all the results. What is the most optimal way to do this on the client side?

Answer 1

The best way to do this today would be to write custom SQL query. e.g.

function read(query, user, request) {
   mssql("SELECT COUNT(id) FROM table WHERE VALUE < 100", [], {
      success: function(results) {
         request.respond(200, results);
      }
   }    
}

Since you may not want to always do this, you could use a request parameter (http://blog.amitapple.com/post/30921523746/customparametersinmobileservices) to indicate that you want to perform this special count operation instead of a normal request.

The Mobile Services team will end custom service operations soon, so you can just have an endpoint that can receive requests, execute scripts and return a response – irrespective of whether it is backed by a table or not.