Microservice Storage

Dependencies

Before you can use Beamable Storage Objects, you need to complete the Getting-Started Guide. That means having Dotnet 8 installed, and getting the Beam CLI.

You can confirm you have everything installed checking the versions of the tools.

dotnet --version
beam version # beam --version also works.

In order to use a Storage Object, you also need to have a local .beamable workspace with a Beamable Standalone Microservice. As a reminder, you can create one quickly using the commands below.

beam init MyProject
cd MyProject
dotnet beam project new service HelloWorld

Storage Objects

A Storage Object is a Mongo database. Beamable will host and manage a database on your behalf when you deploy your project. Locally, the Beam CLI creates a local mongo database inside a Docker container. Beamable never installs mongo directly on your host machine.

To create a Storage Object, use the project new storage command.

beam project new storage

This creates a new .csproj in your existing .sln. You will also be prompted to assign a reference between the Storage Object and some Microservices. A Storage Object cannot exist independently of a Microservice. When you specify a dependency between a Storage Object and a Microservice, Beamable knows to pass the connection credentials to the Microservice.

When developing locally, anytime a Microservice that depends on a Storage Object starts, it will make sure the Docker container for the Storage Object is running. If there is no running container, it will start a container. This can take several seconds and it may appear the service is failing to start.

The code documentation explains how to interact with a Storage Object.

You can also use the project open-mongo command to open a local instance of Mongo Express to inspect your local developer data.