Create an Azure Cosmos account, database, container, and items from the Azure portal

Create an Azure Cosmos DB account

1. From the Azure portal menu or the Home page, select Create a resource.
2. On the New page, search for and select Azure Cosmos DB.
3. On the Select API option page, select the Create option within the Core (SQL) – Recommend section. Azure Cosmos DB provides five APIs: Core (SQL) and MongoDB for document data, Gremlin for graph data, Azure Table, and Cassandra. Currently, you must create a separate account for each API.
4. In the Create Azure Cosmos DB Account page, enter the basic settings for the new Azure Cosmos account.
   
5. In the Global Distribution tab, configure the following details. You can leave the default values for this quickstart
6. Optionally you can configure more details in the following tabs:
   1. Networking – Configure access from a virtual network.
   2. Backup Policy – Configure either periodic or continuous backup policy.
   3. Encryption – Use either service-managed key or a customer-managed key.
   4. Tags – Tags are name/value pairs that enable you to categorize resources and view consolidated billing by applying the same tag to multiple resources and resource groups.
7. Select Review + create.
8. Review the account settings, and then select Create. It takes a few minutes to create the account. Wait for the portal page to display Your deployment is complete.
9. Select Go to resource to go to the Azure Cosmos DB account page.
   

Add a database and a container

1. Select Data Explorer from the left navigation on your Azure Cosmos DB account page, and then select New Container.
2. You may need to scroll right to see the Add Container window.
   
3. In the Add container pane, enter the settings for the new container.
   Database ID: ToDoList
   Database throughput: Manual throughput
   Container ID: Items
   Partition key: /category
4. Select OK. The Data Explorer displays the new database and the container that you created.

Add data to your database

1. In Data Explorer, expand the ToDoList database, and expand the Items container. Next, select Items, and then select New Item.
   
2. Add the following structure to the document on the right side of the Documents pane:

   {
       "id": "1",
       "category": "personal",
       "name": "groceries",
       "description": "Pick up apples and strawberries.",
       "isComplete": false
   }
   

3. Select Save.
   
4. Select New Item again, and create and save another document with a unique id, and any other properties and values you want. Your documents can have any structure, because Azure Cosmos DB doesn’t impose any schema on your data.

Query your data

1. At the top of the Items tab in Data Explorer, review the default query SELECT * FROM c. This query retrieves and displays all documents from the container ordered by ID.
   
2. To change the query, select Edit Filter, replace the default query with ORDER BY c._ts DESC, and then select Apply Filter.
   
   The modified query displays the documents in descending order based on their time stamp, so now your second document is listed first.