An Introduction to Azure Functions (Matt Soucoup ) - If you are looking to get started on Azure function or looking for the Microsoft serverless offer, this post is definitely a good place to start.
Developing bots for Hangouts Chat (Wesley Chun) - If you are using GSuite and still not leveraging bots... This post is a nice starting point to get inspired.
I have been waiting for this feature for so long! I know; it's not a major feature, but it fills an important gap in the Azure offer. We can now create static websites in the Azure Blob Storage (as I'm writing this post the service is still in preview). In this post, I will explain why I think it's a really good news, show how to create and publish on a static website.
Why It's an Awesome News
The cloud is the perfect place when you need to build something huge very quickly. It's also an excellent solution when you have a lot of variance in the number of resources it required. Because Azure is a service, it will provide you as many resources as you would like in few minutes. And when you are done with the resources you stop paying for them; and it's really great like that!
However, if the only thing you need was to host a little something like a blog or a little website for an event or some temporary publicity Azure was not the best place for it. I mean yes of course, you could build a service and host many little websites on it (Scott Hanselman as excellent posts about that like this one), but it felt always a bit overkill for most of the users. Some people kept an "old style" host provider just for that. I mean it's fine, it works... But with Azure storage, it will be really reliable, and at a lower cost! Let's see how we can create one.
Create a Static Website
To have the static website feature you need to create an Azure Blob Storage account the same way you created them before, however, it needs to be of kind General Purpose V2 (GPV2). Today if you install the Azure CLI Storage-extension Preview, you can use it to create one, or simply go on the portal.azure.com. Let's use the portal since it's more visual.
Once the storage is created, open it. On the left menu of the storage blade, click on the Static website (preview) option. That will open the configuration page for our static website. First, click the Enabled button then enter the initial/ index document name (ex:index.html). Finally, click the Save button on the top of the blade.
The shell for our website is now created. A new Azure Blob Storage container named $web h been created. The Primary and secondary endpoint should now be displayed (ex: https://frankdemo.z13.web.core.windows.net/). If you test this URL, you will see and message saying that the content doesn't exist... and it's normal.
Create some content
This is the part where it all depends on your needs. You may already have some HTML pages ready, or you may want to code them all yourself, or the website may previously exist. For this post, I will create a brand-new blog using a static website generator named Wyam (if you would like to see how to do it with Jekyll, another generator, I used it in the video)
To create a new template with Wyam you use the following command in a command prompt. That will create a new website in the subfolder output.
wyam --recipe Blog --theme CleanBlog
Publish to Azure
It's now time to upload our content to the Azure blob Storage. The easiest is probably directly from the portal. To upload a file, click on the $web container, then the Upload button. From the new form, select the file and upload it.
The main problem with this method is the that it only works one file at the time... And a website usually has many of those...
A more efficient way would be to use Azure Explorer or some script. Azure Explorer doesn't support yet the Azure Storage Static Website, but it will be soon. So that leads us to scripts or command lines.
AzCopy
I really like AZCopy as it's very efficient and easy to use. Unfortunately, as I'm writing this post, AzCopy doesn't support the Azure Storage Static Website. I try to upload all content from the output folder (and sub folders)) with a command like this, but it fails.
An Azure CLI extension preview is also available. Like I mentioned previously, the extension gives you the possibility to create a static website or update the configuration, to upload files you have two options the batch would be more efficient of course, but the file by file option also works. Thanks to Carl-Hugo (@CarlHugoM) for your help with those commands.
I finally tried the Visual Studio Code Stogare Extension. After installing it, you need to add a User Setting Ctrl + ,. Then add "azureStorage.preview.staticWebsites" : true to your configuration. Now you just need to click on the extension, then select Azure blob storage from your subscription, and right click to be able to upload a folder.
Depending on how many files, and their sizes it will take a moment. VSCode will notify you when it's done. You will then be able to get back online and refresh your website to see the result.
Conclusion
I'm very happy to see that feature because it fills a need that was not really cover yet by the Microsoft offer. Right now, it's an early preview so even if the service is very stable, not all the tools support it but that only temporary. Right not you can set your custom domain name, however, HTTPS is not supported.
So what do we do with it? Should we wait or jump right on? Well as the best practices imply when a feature is in preview don't put your core business on it yet. If you are just looking to build a personal website, a little promo than... enjoy!
How to uninstall Scrum (Erwin Verweij) - When you will read that post (because you must read it... Seriously), you will smile, giggle and maybe even laugh.
Cloud
Azure Tips and Tricks Part 14 - Generate SSH public key to log into Linux VM with Cloud Shell (Azure Tips and Tricks Part 14 - Generate SSH public key to log into Linux VM with Cloud Shell was published on September 11, 2017.) - Doing a remote desktop on a Windows VM is trivial, but doing the same thing on a Linux machine required just a little more. After reading this post will be a walk in the park.
Why is Serverless Extensibility better than Webhooks? (Bobby Johnson) - A useful post that jumps right in the middle of the debate about the Webhook and serverless. Both are good but planning (as usual) is worth it.
Programming
API Versioning with Azure API Management (Darrel Miller) - Great post that helps to find the peace, or at least make your ideas, about what kind of rules, you should follow.
Microservices: The Good, the Bad and the Hype (Jennifer Riggins) - Nice post that explains some challenges when doing serversless. Because yes, it's a great architecture plan, but it's not magic.
Check out Azure Test Drives in preview (Bryon Surace) - If you wanna test an application on Azure without subscription or anything... Look at test drives.
Everything started when I wanted to share a blog post in progress to someone for review. I didn't want to create a copy, and I was looking for an extremely simple way to share; like an url. This blog post is about all my journey to find that method and all the great possibilities available. I was really happy to that Azure Web App.
I'm writing in Markdown, it's a syntax I really like because it's simple no special application is required to use it. To know more about it see my previous post: Why I switch to Markdown, First VSCode Tasks in less than 5 minutes and Meet my new best friend: Visual Studio Code. The more I use it, the more I like it. I started using it not only not only for blogging, but also for all kinds of notes.
DropBox
One very good thing about Markdown is the fact that is compatible with all platforms. Because of that, I keep my texts in Dropbox. Why not Google Drive or OneDrive? Because Dropbox automatically generates the HTML version so my reviewer could read it in a beautiful format. The file is share-able very easily and if authenticated my reviewer could write comment.
In the PRO version, of DropBox, you can give access only to specific user. That would be very nice for sharing files inside a business or more sensible information.
Unfortunately for me, I don't want to force my reviewer to register. Another interesting fact is that relative paths for images aren't supported. So all images/ charts need also to be share individually before added in the text.
Repositories: GitHub, Bitbucket, etc.
By default, most repositories convert markdown file to HTML so very easy to read. It's also a very good way to have a saved copy. But then you need to have a public repository or give access to people...
Only using repository was not good enough in my case because I don't wish to share unfinished work with everyone.
Jekyll
Option 1 - Jekyll
Jekyll is a static website generator written in Ruby. It's really well integrated to Github, and you can even host your blog in a Github repository. However, since I would prefer to keep my in progress work more private, I decided to go with Bitbucket. Bitbucket is a great repository that supports Git and Mercurial system and allowed private repositories.
We could have Jekyll in a Git repository host on Bitbucket that would be hook-up to an Azure Web App with a continuous deployment.
Here the steps:
First create a private repository from Bitbucket.
Clone that fresh repository on your local machine.
Now it's time to create your Jekyll site.
If you don't have Ruby or Jekyll already installed on your machine now it's time. It's very easy just follow the instruction on the official website.
To create a new site, open a command prompt and type the command: jekyll new NameOfMySite then cd ./NameOfMySite and jekyll serve
To see your new site you just need to browse to http:localhost:4000. Add your Markdown files to the folder _posts and be sure they respect the naming convention YYYY-MM-DD-Title.md
Now it's time to add all the files to our Git repository with the command git add -A, and before pushing let create a new Azure Web App.
Go to http://portal.azure.com a create a new Azure Web App.
From the top left click the "+ New" button.
Select Web+ Mobile, then click on Web App
Fill-up the name, subscription plan and click the create button.
After few second, the Web App will be ready. It's time to add a continuous deployment to it. Note: that right now the deployment settings are FTP.
In the Web App blade, if not already go in the Setting section.
Scroll done the Settings to Continuous deployment and click on it.
Now choose your source control, in this case Bitbucket.
It's now time to publish our site to our Remote repository with git push.
In the Azure portal, you will see the deployment progress and history.
The combination Jekyll / Bitbucket / Azure Web App work great, but we need to generate the code locally and checked-in both source and generated content in the repository. Furthermore, since we need to generate the code, Ruby and Jekyll need to be installed on every machine we will be using.
Option 2 - Jekyll Extension to Azure Web App
I found a really great Azure Web App Extension Jekyll Extenstion on GitHub. That will simplify a lot the process thanks to Cory's works. To use it simple follow the four steps explain on the Github page:
Create an Azure Web App
Set an App Setting for SCM_COMMAND_IDLE_TIMEOUT to 600. From the Web App blade click on Settings and select Application settings. Add the new line, and click the save button.
Install the Jekyll Site Extension
Always From the Web App blade click on Tools, then select Extension
Click Add button
Found and select Jekyll Extension
Now we need to hook up your Git repository or Push a local (in Azure) Git repository with your Jekyll site.
I really liked this solution. It's very simple to install. Because it used a repository, I can keep a historic of all my texts. Moreover, only the texts and images are in the repository, and since the site is generated in the cloud, no need to install anything on other machines.
Directly from Visual Studio Code, I can write my article, and when I'm read I just need to do a push (still inside VSCode). The site will automatically be built and deployed in my Azure Web App.
Santra.Snow
While doing my research, I found Sandra.Snow another static site generator inspired from Jekyll but in .Net using Nancy library.
To use it, a little bit of work is required. The easiest way is to fork the Github project and compile the solution to get dlls and exes.
Create a new folder for your site [MySnowSite].
In MySnowSite folder, create another folder Sandra.Snow.Processor and copy/paste: Nancy.dll, Nancy.Testing.dll, Nancy.ViewEngines.Razor.dll and Snow.exe generated previously.
You can now copy the Sandra.Snow/SnowSite/Snow folder into MySnowSite folder.
Add deployment and deploy.cmd files from Sandra.Snow/SnowSite into MySnowSite folder.
Few changes were required in deploy.cmd (line: 29, 31, 56, 57)
@echo off
:: ----------------------
:: KUDU Deployment Script
:: ----------------------
:: Setup
:: -----
setlocal enabledelayedexpansion
SET ARTIFACTS=%~dp0%artifacts
IF NOT DEFINED DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE (
SET DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE=%~dp0%.
)
IF NOT DEFINED DEPLOYMENT_TARGET (
SET DEPLOYMENT_TARGET=%ARTIFACTS%\wwwroot
)
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
:: Deployment
:: ----------
:: 3. Build Snow Site
echo -----
echo Start - Building the Snow Site
echo Running Snow.exe config=%DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE%\Snow\
pushd %DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE%
call %DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE%\Sandra.Snow.Processor\Snow.exe config=%DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE%\Snow\
IF !ERRORLEVEL! NEQ 0 goto error
echo Finish - Building the Snow Site
echo -----
IF NOT DEFINED NEXT_MANIFEST_PATH (
SET NEXT_MANIFEST_PATH=%ARTIFACTS%\manifest
IF NOT DEFINED PREVIOUS_MANIFEST_PATH (
SET PREVIOUS_MANIFEST_PATH=%ARTIFACTS%\manifest
)
)
IF NOT DEFINED KUDU_SYNC_COMMAND (
:: Install kudu sync
echo Installing Kudu Sync
call npm install kudusync -g --silent
IF !ERRORLEVEL! NEQ 0 goto error
:: Locally just running "kuduSync" would also work
SET KUDU_SYNC_COMMAND=node "%appdata%\npm\node_modules\kuduSync\bin\kuduSync"
)
echo Kudu Sync from "%DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE%\Snow\Website" to "%DEPLOYMENT_TARGET%"
call %KUDU_SYNC_COMMAND% -q -f "%DEPLOYMENT_SOURCE%\Snow\Website" -t "%DEPLOYMENT_TARGET%" -n "%NEXT_MANIFEST_PATH%" -p "%PREVIOUS_MANIFEST_PATH%" -i ".git;.deployment;deploy.cmd" 2>nul
IF !ERRORLEVEL! NEQ 0 goto error
::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::::
goto end
:error
echo An error has occured during web site deployment.
exit /b 1
:end
echo Finished successfully.
Like previously created a Azure Web App and hook up a Git repository or push to an Azure one. You can find a lot of information on the blog of Sandra.Snow creator Phillip Haydon.
Bonus
For both Jekyll (option 2) and Sandra.Snow that used Azure Web App continuous deployment use can use Dropbox instead of Git repository. Why would you use Dropbox? Well, since Dropbox is available on any kind of platform, you would be able to write from your iPad or android tablet, or anything! To learn more about how to do it, see one of my previous post: Setup an automatic deployment on Azure with Dropbox in 5 minutes.
Just for the fun, I created one theme for Sandra.Snow that I put on GitHub: Sandra.Snow.NotesTheme, feel free to use it.
First look at Application Insights (Andrei Dzimchuk) - Excellent post. Perfect to make your idea about why and how we should use Application Insights. Nice touch to the config.
Cloud
Integration with Azure Service Bus (Vincent-Philippe Lauzon) - Great post that summarizes best practices and important tips related to Azure service Bus.
Get the DocumentDB SQL query cheat sheet (Aravind Ramachandran) - Confuse sometime with the syntax of noSql, this post shared a cheatsheet that should be saved (or printed).
Suggestion of the week
