Django to Azure Appservice stack

Use this stack to spin up a django app and deploy to azure in seconds.

Why should you use this stack?

You can spin up your own Django website in seconds.

Deployment happens on Azure Cloud via a Azure App Service.

The stack also sets up a proper Github CI/CD environment by taing care of the following things

1. Branch Naming convention - You can use any branch prefixed with "dev" as your development environment.
2. Branch Protection Setting - Developers working on this branch can work freely and push changes without a PR and a code reviewer. This facilitates quick development.

Note: Once you create a repo out of this stack, you can find your website deployed at <azure_app_name>.azurewebsites.net.

What are the inputs to pass while setting up the stack?

# Name of the Azure App which has been configured to host the website
- AZURE_APP_NAME

# Azure Credentials, this can be obtained using Azure cli
- AZURE_CREDENTIALS

The value of AZURE_CREDENTIALS is expected to be a JSON object that represents a service principal (an identifer for an application or process) that authenticates the workflow with Azure.

To function correctly, this service principal must be assigned the Contributor role for the web app or the resource group that contains the web app.

The following steps describe how to create the service principal, assign the role, and create a secret in your repository with the resulting credentials.

1. Open the Azure Cloud Shell at https://shell.azure.com. You can alternately use the Azure CLI if you've installed it locally. (For more information on Cloud Shell, see the Cloud Shell Overview.)

2. Use the az ad sp create-for-rbac command to create a service principal and assign a Contributor role:

   az ad sp create-for-rbac --name "{sp-name}" --sdk-auth --role contributor \
       --scopes /subscriptions/{subscription-id}/resourceGroups/{resource-group}/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/{app-name}
   

   Replace the following:

   • {sp-name} with a suitable name for your service principal, such as the name of the app itself. The name must be unique within your organization.
   • {subscription-id} with the subscription you want to use
   • {resource-group} the resource group containing the web app.
   • {app-name} with the name of the web app.

   This command invokes Azure Active Directory (via the ad part of the command) to create a service principal (via sp) specifically for Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) (via create-for-rbac).

   The --role argument specifies the permissions to grant to the service principal at the specified --scope. In this case, you grant the built-in Contributor role at the scope of the web app in the specified resource group in the specified subscription.

   If desired, you can omit the part of the scope starting with /providers/... to grant the service principal the Contributor role for the entire resource group:

   az ad sp create-for-rbac --name "{sp-name}" --sdk-auth --role contributor \
       --scopes /subscriptions/{subscription-id}/resourceGroups/{resource-group}
   

   For security purposes, however, it's always preferable to grant permissions at the most restrictive scope possible.

3. When complete, the az ad sp create-for-rbac command displays JSON output in the following form (which is specified by the --sdk-auth argument):

   {
     "clientId": "<GUID>",
     "clientSecret": "<GUID>",
     "subscriptionId": "<GUID>",
     "tenantId": "<GUID>",
     (...)
   }

Github apps installed with this stack

None

How to setup local development server?

Pre-requisites:
- Python3
- Django

Run following commands to install dependencies and view the app in the browser:
- sudo pip install -r requirements.txt
- python3 manage.py migrate
- python3 manage.py runserver
- open http://127.0.0.1:8000/

Learn more

Django

Visit Djangoproject.com to view the full documentation.

Azure Cloud

Learn more about Azure from the official site.

Other Useful links

Security guide

Please see our guide lines for reporting issues related to security.md.

Contributor guide

Please see our guide lines for contributing.md.

Contributors

• Harshini K S (@harshiniks)