DocumentDB Emulator Remote Connection - azure-cosmosdb

Question

Do we have any way to connect document dB emulator from remote system ?
Can we create procedure , triggers , user defined functions etcs in document db emulator ?

Answer 1

The Emulator is meant for local dev scenarios, since it runs exposing a local port, you probably could (never tried, this is purely theoretical) work around the firewall and expose it, then connect from another system using your external IP and the exposed port.
There is also the local SSL certificate that you must solve (that probably is the biggest issue), though you could try with the TCP connection setting, might want to check this thread about which ports need to be opened.
Also, the Emulator does not have the entire feature set that the live service does:
The DocumentDB Emulator supports only a single fixed account and a well-known master key. Key regeneration is not possible in the DocumentDB Emulator.
The DocumentDB Emulator is not a scalable service and will not support a large number of collections.
The DocumentDB Emulator does not simulate different DocumentDB consistency levels.
The DocumentDB Emulator does not simulate multi-region replication.
The DocumentDB Emulator does not support the service quota overrides that are available in the Azure DocumentDB service (e.g. document size limits, increased partitioned collection storage).
As your copy of the DocumentDB Emulator might not be up to date with the most recent changes with the Azure DocumentDB service, please DocumentDB capacity planner to accurately estimate production throughput (RUs) needs of your application.
So, you are probably better off installing the emulator on the other system via the installer or Chocolatey and avoid all the problems.

Answer 2

UPDATE: My following attempted solution doesn't work. Connection Timeout, 192.168.0.101:8881 using the Node.js DocumentDB sdk. I think because of SSL. :/ Sorry. Leaving this "Answer" for documentation on what doesn't work, and if anyone knows how to bypass DocumentDB Emulator SSL.
I am trying to connect DocumentDB Emulator across my local network. (I dev on a virtual machine)
I am trying to do a port forward, to the 8081 local port that DocumentDB Emulator listens on. In Command Prompt (Run as Administrator)
netsh interface portproxy add v4tov4 listenaddress=192.168.0.101 listenport=8080 connectport=8081 connectaddress=127.0.0.1
192.168.0.101 is the network address of the PC.
Now I'm able to navigate to:
https://192.168.0.101:8080/_explorer/index.html and see the data explorer. Optimistic I can get this working for dev, with SSL turned off?
Also tried to use node.js http-proxy couldn't get it working with self-signed certificates. :(
Update, I actually got http-proxy working, but it only works if you start the servers in a specific order...
start api server
start proxy server (on windows box) with secure: true
make a failed connection
change proxy server (on windows box) to secure: false; restart;
now it's working... but useless for dev, because if you restart the API server after code change, the connection fails again.
Sample Node.js Proxy to be run on Windows box:
```
var fs = require('fs'),
httpProxy = require('http-proxy');
//
// Create the proxy server listening on port 443
//
httpProxy.createServer({
ssl: {
key: fs.readFileSync('valid-ssl-key.pem', 'utf8'),
cert: fs.readFileSync('valid-ssl-cert.pem', 'utf8')
},
target: 'https://localhost:8081',
secure: true // Depends on your needs, could be false.
}).listen(8881);
```

Answer 3

You just need to start the documentdb with additional parameters:
start "" "c:\Program Files\Azure Cosmos DB Emulator\CosmosDB.Emulator.exe" /AllowNetworkAccess /NoFirewall /Key=C2y6yDjf5/R+ob0N8A7Cgv30VRDJIWEHLM+4QDU5DE2nQ9nDuVTqobD4b8mGGyPMbIZnqyMsEcaGQy67XIw/Jw==
Checkout the documentdb docker file for more details: https://github.com/Azure/azure-cosmos-db-emulator-docker/blob/master/package_scripts/startemu.cmd