Deploy a Web App to Azure

This tutorial guides you through the process of deploying a simple web application to Azure App Service. Azure App Service is a fully managed platform that enables you to build and host web apps, mobile back ends, and RESTful APIs in the programming language of your choice without managing infrastructure.

Step 1: Prerequisites

Before you begin, ensure you have the following:

An Azure account with an active subscription. If you don't have one, you can create a free account.
The Azure CLI installed on your local machine. You can download it from here.
A basic understanding of Git.

This tutorial assumes you have a sample web application ready, for example, a Node.js Express app, a Python Flask app, or a .NET Core app. For this example, we'll use a placeholder for your app's code.

Step 2: Log in to Azure

Open your terminal or command prompt and log in to your Azure account using the Azure CLI:

az login

This command will open a browser window for you to authenticate your Azure account.

Step 3: Create an Azure Resource Group

A resource group is a logical container that holds related Azure resources. Create a new resource group for your web app:

az group create --name MyWebAppResourceGroup --location eastus

Replace MyWebAppResourceGroup with your desired resource group name and eastus with your preferred Azure region.

Step 4: Create an App Service Plan

An App Service plan defines a set of compute resources for your web app. Create a new App Service plan:

                        az appservice plan create --name MyWebAppPlan --resource-group MyWebAppResourceGroup --sku B1 --is-linux
                    

--name: A unique name for your App Service plan.
--resource-group: The name of the resource group created in the previous step.
--sku B1: Specifies the pricing tier. B1 is a cost-effective choice for testing. You can explore other SKUs like F1 (free) or S1 (standard).
--is-linux: Specifies that the plan will run on Linux. For Windows, omit this flag or use --is-windows.

Step 5: Create Your Web App

Now, create your web app within the App Service plan. This command assumes you'll be deploying your code using Git.

                        az webapp create --name MyAwesomeWebApp123 --resource-group MyWebAppResourceGroup --plan MyWebAppPlan --deployment-source-url https://github.com/Azure-Samples/nodejs-docs-hello-world.git --deployment-source-branch main
                    

--name: A globally unique name for your web app. Azure will append a default domain name.
--resource-group: Your resource group name.
--plan: Your App Service plan name.
--deployment-source-url: The URL of your Git repository containing your web app code.
--deployment-source-branch: The branch to deploy from.

For this example, we're using a sample Node.js repository. Replace this with your actual repository URL and branch.

Step 6: Browse Your Web App

Once the deployment is complete, you can browse your web app. You can find its URL in the output of the previous command, or by running:

                        az webapp show --name MyAwesomeWebApp123 --resource-group MyWebAppResourceGroup --query "defaultHostName"
                    

Open this URL in your web browser to see your deployed web application.

Next Steps

Congratulations! You have successfully deployed a web app to Azure App Service. Consider exploring these next steps:

Set up continuous deployment from GitHub or Azure DevOps.
Configure a custom domain for your web app.
Add an SSL certificate to secure your app.
Scale your web app to handle more traffic.