Tutorial: Build and deploy your app to Azure Container Apps

This article demonstrates how to build and deploy a microservice to Azure Container Apps from a source repository using your preferred programming language.

This is the first tutorial in the series of articles that walk you through how to use core capabilities within Azure Container Apps. The first step is to create a back end web API service that returns a static collection of music albums.

Note

You can also build and deploy this app using the az containerapp up by following the instructions in the Quickstart: Build and deploy an app to Azure Container Apps from a repository article. The az containerapp up command is a fast and convenient way to build and deploy your app to Azure Container Apps using a single command. However, it doesn't provide the same level of customization for your container app.

The next tutorial in the series will build and deploy the front end web application to Azure Container Apps.

The following screenshot shows the output from the album API deployed in this tutorial.

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 User Access Administrator or Owner permission on the Azure subscription to proceed. Make sure to use the most restrictive role for your context.

See Assign Azure roles using the Azure portal and Azure roles, Microsoft Entra roles, and classic subscription administrator rolesfor details.
GitHub Account Sign up for free.
git Install git
Azure CLI Install the Azure CLI.
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.
GitHub Account Sign up for free.
git Install git
Azure CLI Install the Azure CLI.
Docker Desktop Docker provides installers that configure the Docker environment on macOS, Windows, and Linux.

From your command prompt, type docker to ensure Docker is running.

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.

RESOURCE_GROUP="album-containerapps"
LOCATION="canadacentral"
ENVIRONMENT="env-album-containerapps"
API_NAME="album-api"
FRONTEND_NAME="album-ui"
GITHUB_USERNAME="<YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME>"

Before you run this command, make sure to replace <YOUR_GITHUB_USERNAME> with your GitHub username.

Next, define a container registry name unique to you.

ACR_NAME="acaalbums"$GITHUB_USERNAME

Prepare the GitHub repository

Navigate to the repository for your preferred language and fork the repository.

Select the Fork button at the top of the album API repo to fork the repo to your account.

Now you can clone your fork of the sample repository.

Use the following git command to clone your forked repo into the code-to-cloud folder:

git clone https://github.com/$GITHUB_USERNAME/containerapps-albumapi-csharp.git code-to-cloud

Next, change the directory into the root of the cloned repo.

cd code-to-cloud/src

Create an Azure resource group

Create a resource group to organize the services related to your container app deployment.

az group create \
  --name $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --location "$LOCATION"

Create an Azure Container Registry

After the album API container image is built, create an Azure Container Registry (ACR) instance in your resource group to store it.

az acr create \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --name $ACR_NAME \
  --sku Basic \
  --admin-enabled true

Build your application

With ACR tasks, you can build and push the docker image for the album API without installing Docker locally.

Build the container with ACR

Run the following command to initiate the image build and push process using ACR. The . at the end of the command represents the docker build context, meaning this command should be run within the src folder where the Dockerfile is located.

az acr build --registry $ACR_NAME --image $API_NAME .

Output from the az acr build command shows the upload progress of the source code to Azure and the details of the docker build and docker push operations.

Build your application

The following steps, demonstrate how to build your container image locally using Docker and push the image to the new container registry.

Build the container with Docker

The following command builds a container image for the album API and tags it with the fully qualified name of the ACR login server. The . at the end of the command represents the docker build context, meaning this command should be run within the src folder where the Dockerfile is located.

docker build --tag $ACR_NAME.azurecr.io/$API_NAME .

Push the image to your container registry

First, sign in to your Azure Container Registry.

az acr login --name $ACR_NAME

Now, push the image to your registry.

docker push $ACR_NAME.azurecr.io/$API_NAME

Create a Container Apps environment

The Azure Container Apps environment acts as a secure boundary around a group of container apps.

Create the Container Apps environment using the following command.

az containerapp env create \
  --name $ENVIRONMENT \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --location "$LOCATION"

Deploy your image to a container app

Now that you have an environment created, you can create and deploy your container app with the az containerapp create command.

Create and deploy your container app with the following command.

az containerapp create \
  --name $API_NAME \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP \
  --environment $ENVIRONMENT \
  --image $ACR_NAME.azurecr.io/$API_NAME \
  --target-port 8080 \
  --ingress external \
  --registry-server $ACR_NAME.azurecr.io \
  --query properties.configuration.ingress.fqdn
  • By setting --ingress to external, your container app is accessible from the public internet.

  • The target-port is set to 8080 to match the port that the container is listening to for requests.

  • Without a query property, the call to az containerapp create returns a JSON response that includes a rich set of details about the application. Adding a query parameter filters the output to just the app's fully qualified domain name (FQDN).

Verify deployment

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

Screenshot of response from albums API endpoint.

Clean up resources

If you're not going to continue on to the Communication between microservices tutorial, you can remove the Azure resources created during this quickstart. Run the following command to delete the resource group along with all the resources created in this quickstart.

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

This quickstart is the entrypoint for a set of progressive tutorials that showcase the various features within Azure Container Apps. Continue on to learn how to enable communication from a web front end that calls the API you deployed in this article.