Deploying Azure web job written in .net core

Lately I have written a .net core web job and wanted to publish it via CD (continuous deployment) from Visual Studio Online. Soon I figured, Azure Web Job SDK doesn’t support (yet) .net core. The work I expected will take 10 mins took about an hour.

If you are also figuring out this, this blog post is what you are looking for.

I will describe the steps and provide a PowerShell script that does the deployment via Kudu API. Kudu is the Source Control management for Azure app services, which has a Zip API that allows us to deploy zipped folder into an Azure app service.

Here are the steps you need to follow. You can start by creating a simple .net core console application. Add a Power Shell file into the project that will do the deployment in your Visual Studio online release pipeline. The Power Shell script will do the following:

• Publish the project (using dotnet publish)
• Make a zip out of the artifacts
• Deploy the zip into the Azure web app

Publishing the project

We will use dotnet publish command to publish our project.

$resourceGroupName = "my-regource-group"
$webAppName = "my-web-job"
$projectName = "WebJob"
$outputRoot = "webjobpublish"
$ouputFolderPath = "webjobpublish\App_Data\Jobs\Continuous\my-web-job"
$zipName = "publishwebjob.zip"

$projectFolder = Join-Path `
    -Path "$((get-item $PSScriptRoot ).FullName)" `
    -ChildPath $projectName
$outputFolder = Join-Path `
    -Path "$((get-item $PSScriptRoot ).FullName)" `
    -ChildPath $ouputFolderPath
$outputFolderTopDir = Join-Path `
    -Path "$((get-item $PSScriptRoot ).FullName)" `
    -ChildPath $outputRoot
$zipPath = Join-Path `
    -Path "$((get-item $PSScriptRoot ).FullName)" `
    -ChildPath $zipName

if (Test-Path $outputFolder)
  { Remove-Item $outputFolder -Recurse -Force; }
if (Test-path $zipName) {Remove-item $zipPath -Force}
$fullProjectPath = "$projectFolder\$projectName.csproj"

dotnet publish "$fullProjectPath"
     --configuration release --output $outputFolder

Create a compressed artifact folder

We will use System.IO.Compression.Filesystem assembly to create the zip file.

Add-Type -assembly "System.IO.Compression.Filesystem"
[IO.Compression.Zipfile]::CreateFromDirectory(
        $outputFolderTopDir, $zipPath)

Upload the zip into Azure web app

Next step is to upload the zip file into the Azure web app. This is where we first need to fetch the credentials for the Azure web app and then use the Kudu API to upload the content. Here’s the script:

function Get-PublishingProfileCredentials
         ($resourceGroupName, $webAppName) {

    $resourceType = "Microsoft.Web/sites/config"
    $resourceName = "$webAppName/publishingcredentials"

    $publishingCredentials = Invoke-AzureRmResourceAction `
                 -ResourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
                 -ResourceType $resourceType `
                 -ResourceName $resourceName `
                 -Action list `
                 -ApiVersion 2015-08-01 `
                 -Force
    return $publishingCredentials
}

function Get-KuduApiAuthorisationHeaderValue
         ($resourceGroupName, $webAppName) {

    $publishingCredentials =
      Get-PublishingProfileCredentials $resourceGroupName $webAppName

    return ("Basic {0}" -f `
        [Convert]::ToBase64String( `
        [Text.Encoding]::ASCII.GetBytes(("{0}:{1}"
           -f $publishingCredentials.Properties.PublishingUserName, `
        $publishingCredentials.Properties.PublishingPassword))))
}

$kuduHeader = Get-KuduApiAuthorisationHeaderValue `
    -resourceGroupName $resourceGroupName `
    -webAppName $webAppName

$Headers = @{
    Authorization = $kuduHeader
}

# use kudu deploy from zip file
Invoke-WebRequest `
    -Uri https://$webAppName.scm.azurewebsites.net/api/zipdeploy `
    -Headers $Headers `
    -InFile $zipPath `
    -ContentType "multipart/form-data" `
    -Method Post

# Clean up the artifacts now
if (Test-Path $outputFolder)
      { Remove-Item $outputFolder -Recurse -Force; }
if (Test-path $zipName) {Remove-item $zipPath -Force}

PowerShell task in Visual Studio Online

Now we can leverage the Azure PowerShell task in Visual Studio Release pipeline and invoke the script to deploy the web job.

That’s it!

Thanks for reading, and have a nice day!