Right click publish quickly to Azure App Services with VS Code extensions and zipdeploy - Scott Hanselman's Blog

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2023-02-03 23:00:15

I wanted to see what was the fastest way to get an ASP.NET Core web site up (for free) on Azure. First, I could use Visual Studio Community (which is free), and just right click Publish, sign into Azure, and make a free Web App and I'm cool. But I also wanted to see what it was like on Visual Studio Code (which would work on Linux, etc)

I made a new ASP.NET web site with "dotnet new razor" at the command line. The Azure App Service extension makes a new Azure icon appear on the left of VS Code. I can see my subscription(s) and any sites I've made before. I can right-click the top of the tree or just click the + plus sign.

TRICK: The default mode of the Azure App Service extension is "basic" mode. This is fine for messing around, but it will assume a bunch of things. You don't have control over the location (it'll pick a nearby one) or really anything. Again, it's fine. However, if you DO want explicit prompts for name, location, OS, runtime, etc you can turn on "appService.advanced" in File | Preferences | Settings (or Ctrl+,). Don't feel you need to, but know it's possible.

Now, in my opinion, deploying apps (.NET Core, Node, or otherwise) directly from source can be a little confusing, and it doesn't really scale for anything other than proofs of concept. There's usually a "build" step, and ideally you'll have a CI/CD (Continuous Integration/Continuous Deployment) pipeline for anything of any real size. It's easier than you think - you can likely get a basic DevOps pipeline up in a hour or so. I commit to GitHub and it just deploys to Azure.