Reducing friction in using the shell with the emulator

[seesharprun]

Today, the OOTB experience for the shell with the emulator is not ideal.

Ideally, you would:

1. Pull and run the emulator:

   docker run --detach --publish 8081:8081 --publish 8080:8080 --publish 1234:1234 mcr.microsoft.com/cosmosdb/linux/azure-cosmos-emulator:vnext-preview

2. Get the emulator connection string from the documentation or the Data Explorer

   This connection string uses https scheme by default.

3. Run the shell

   dnx cosmosdbshell --prerelease

4. Connect to the emulator endpoint

   connect "<emulator-connection-string>"

This fails OOTB because the shell is attempting to use SSL to connect to the emulator which requires extra steps. You can either:

• Install the certificates
• Update the connection string to use the http scheme

What would be great if there was a flag or shorthand for connecting to the emulator which already has this baked in like:

> connect --emulator

or

> connect "UseEmulator=true;"

[mkrueger]

I like the "connect --emulator" idea.

[sevoku]

My concern with --emulator is that it's error prone and might be hiding a security issue. What should the Shell do? Probe https and fall back to http in that case? Also the docker image has the --protocol [https|http] parameter to explicitly set the protocol. IMHO this is a documentation issue in first place, the emulator is emulating a Cosmos DB Account and so should it be treated by tooling. From Shell usage perspective there should be no difference and users should be taught how to connect to it anyway, so they should know the endpoints and protocols.

[mkrueger]

y probe https - fallback to http is what I would do.

But y it's a documentation issue.