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Quickstart: Build and deploy from local source code to Azure Container Apps

  • Article

This article demonstrates how to build and deploy a microservice to Azure Container Apps from local source code using the programming language of your choice. In this quickstart, you create a backend web API service that returns a static collection of music albums.

Note

This sample application is available in two versions. One version where the source contains a Dockerfile. The other version has no Dockerfile. Select the version that best reflects your source code. If you are new to containers, select the No Dockerfile option at the top.

The following screenshot shows the output from the album API service you deploy.

Screenshot of response from albums API endpoint.

Prerequisites

To complete this project, you need the following items:

Requirement Instructions
Azure account If you don't have one, create an account for free. You need the Contributor or Owner permission on the Azure subscription to proceed.

Refer to Assign Azure roles using the Azure portal for details.
Azure CLI Install the Azure CLI.

Setup

To sign in to Azure from the CLI, run the following command and follow the prompts to complete the authentication process.

az login

To ensure you're running the latest version of the CLI, run the upgrade command.

az upgrade

Next, install or update the Azure Container Apps extension for the CLI.

If you receive errors about missing parameters when you run az containerapp commands in Azure CLI or cmdlets from the Az.App module in Azure PowerShell, be sure you have the latest version of the Azure Container Apps extension installed.

az extension add --name containerapp --upgrade

Note

Starting in May 2024, Azure CLI extensions no longer enable preview features by default. To access Container Apps preview features, install the Container Apps extension with --allow-preview true.

az extension add --name containerapp --upgrade --allow-preview true

Now that the current extension or module is installed, register the Microsoft.App and Microsoft.OperationalInsights namespaces.

az provider register --namespace Microsoft.App

az provider register --namespace Microsoft.OperationalInsights

Create environment variables

Now that your Azure CLI setup is complete, you can define the environment variables that are used throughout this article.

Define the following variables in your bash shell.

export RESOURCE_GROUP="album-containerapps"
export LOCATION="canadacentral"
export ENVIRONMENT="env-album-containerapps"
export API_NAME="album-api"

Get the sample code

Download and extract the API sample application in the language of your choice.

Download the source code to your machine.

Extract the download and change into the containerapps-albumapi-csharp-main/src folder.

Download the source code to your machine.

Extract the download and change into the containerapps-albumapi-csharp-buildpack/src folder.

Build and deploy the container app

Build and deploy your first container app with the containerapp up command. This command will:

  • Create the resource group
  • Create an Azure Container Registry
  • Build the container image and push it to the registry
  • Create the Container Apps environment with a Log Analytics workspace
  • Create and deploy the container app using the built container image
  • Create the resource group
  • Create a default registry as part of your environment
  • Detect the language and runtime of your application and build the image using the appropriate Buildpack
  • Push the image into the Azure Container Apps default registry
  • Create the Container Apps environment with a Log Analytics workspace
  • Create and deploy the container app using the built container image

The up command uses the Dockerfile in the root of the repository to build the container image. The EXPOSE instruction in the Dockerfile defined the target port, which is the port used to send ingress traffic to the container.

If the up command doesn't find a Dockerfile, it automatically uses Buildpacks to turn your application source into a runnable container. Since the Buildpack is trying to run the build on your behalf, you need to tell the up command which port to send ingress traffic to.

In the following code example, the . (dot) tells containerapp up to run in the current directory of the extracted sample API application.

az containerapp up \
  --name $API_NAME \
  --location $LOCATION \
  --environment $ENVIRONMENT \
  --source .

az containerapp up \
  --name $API_NAME \
  --location $LOCATION \
  --environment $ENVIRONMENT \
  --ingress external \
  --target-port 8080 \
  --source .

Important

In order to deploy your container app to an existing resource group, include --resource-group yourResourceGroup to the containerapp up command.

Verify deployment

Copy the FQDN to a web browser. From your web browser, go to the /albums endpoint of the FQDN.

Screenshot of response from albums API endpoint.

Limits

The maximum size for uploading source code is 200MB. If the upload goes over the limit, error 413 is returned.

Clean up resources

If you're not going to continue on to the Deploy a frontend tutorial, you can remove the Azure resources created during this quickstart with the following command.

Caution

The following command deletes the specified resource group and all resources contained within it. If the group contains resources outside the scope of this quickstart, they are also deleted.

az group delete --name $RESOURCE_GROUP

Tip

Having issues? Let us know on GitHub by opening an issue in the Azure Container Apps repo.

Next steps

After completing this quickstart, you can continue to Tutorial: Communication between microservices in Azure Container Apps to learn how to deploy a front end application that calls the API.

Tutorial: Communication between microservices