DocumentDB in Visual Studio With Cloud Explorer

Recently, during a Global Azure Boot camp presentation, one offline question was asked about how to see and browse the data from DocumentDB. So, I thought there must be lots of developers who might have the same question.

Yes, you can see your DocumentDB data in Visual Studio. There is an extension called Cloud explorer from where you can browse all the services of Azure. With the Visual Studio community edition, it comes built in. But, if you don't have that already, then you can install it via the following steps.

How to Install Cloud Explorer in Visual Studio

Open Visual Studio and go to "Extensions and Updates..." like below.

Once you click on that it open a window loading all of the extensions. Select online and type cloud in the search box... then you should be able to see Cloud Explorer, like below.

I have Cloud Explorer installed on my Visual studio (see the Green tick) otherwise it would show a download button there for you to download and install it.

You can also download it manually from the following links:

For Visual Studio 2015:

https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/84e83a7c-9606-4f9f-83dd-0f6182f13add

For Visual Studio 2013:

https://visualstudiogallery.msdn.microsoft.com/d3896fc2-109b-4420-9c38-b6ab1cfa9fe5

How to Use Cloud Explorer to See Data in DocumentDB:

One you are done with installing Cloud Explorer, you can load it from View Menu-> Cloud explorer in Visual Studio. It will load like below.

Here I have already given my Azure Credentials. If you have not given them yet, it will ask you for the credentials and then load this screen.

Here, you can see the list of all services available for storage. To see what is in our DocumentDB account, click on DocumentDB Account.  It will show your account name like below.

Once you click on the database name, it will show the collection and record below.

Once you select records (JSON documents) and right click, it asks for you to "Open in Editor," like below.

Once you click on Open In Editor, It will ask open that JSON document like below.

So, you can see that it's very easy to browse the data of DocumentDB in Cloud Explorer within Visual Studio itself. I hope this helps!