NEED TO KNOW ABOUT AZURE APP SERVICES

What is AZURE APP SERVICE?

Azure App Service is an HTTP-based service for hosting web applications, REST APIs, and mobile backends. It is powerful platform that simplifies application development and deployment. It is cost effective, it has an extensive pricing features and seamless integration it is an excellent choice for developers and businesses looking to modernize their applications.
Azure App Service provides the tools and infrastructure needed to succeed successfully build a simple website or a complex enterprise solution. It is a fully managed platform-as-a-service (PaaS) offered by Microsoft Azure.

Importance of Azure App Service

1. COST EFFECTIVE: This ensures users can pay for only the resources they use. This is beneficial for small scale businesses and startups.

2. SECURITY: Azure Active Directory integration and managed firewall ensures robust application security.

3. EASY TO USE: Deploying your app is simple with tools like visual studio, Azure CLI, or the Azure Portal.

4. No Need To Managed Servers, Microsoft takes care of the servers for u so u can focus on building your app.

USES OF AZURE APP SERVICE

You Can use Azure App Service with diffrent programming languages like:

• .NET
• Java
• Python
• Node.js
• PHP
• Ruby

This in a nutshell mean you can build your app using the language you know best.

1. If your app gets more users, you can; Scale Up (make your server more powerful) or Scale Out ( Add more servers to handle more traffic)

2. Azure App Service works with tools like GitHub and Azure DevOps. This will allow u make updates to your app automatically, so your app always stay current.

3. You can give your app a custom web address and protect it with SSL certificate to keep user data safe.

4. Azure App Service runs on servers all over the world.

How To Get Started

• Sign in to Azure Portal https://portal.azure.com/#home

• The next step is to type App services on the search bar as shown below.

• On the App Service page we click on create then select Web App. For the purpose of this tutorial we are going to be creating a web app. (A web application is a web app is simply a program or tool you use on the internet through a web browser like Chrome, Firefox, or Safari. You don’t need to download or install it—just open a browser, go to the app's website, and start using it.)

• When creating a web app we need have an active azure subscription. Then we are going to create a resource group.

• We will also an empty web app. To do this we give the instance a name.

• The next column is how u want to publish it, either by Code/Container. For this tutorial we choose Code.

• We are going to be choosing a runtime stack. Choose our operating system either a windows or Linux since the clod provider is going to handling spinning up a VM .

Our Region will be by default chosen for us.

• Another crucial step is to pay attention to our App service plan, this plan will be automatically selected for u by the cloud provider. This plan allows the cloud provider know the kind of compute resource users want to use. By Default it will be at standard.

• NOTE: This is a Platform As A Service (PaaS) the cloud provider has the duty of providing all the infrastructure.

• After following through this steps, u review and create.

• Head Over to ChatGPT or any other Developers community to generate code for our App Service we are going to host on the web. For this tutorial, I will be creating a bitcoin app using Html, CSS and JavaScript codes.

• After Successful deployment of our Web App we head over to the resource group.

• On our Resource Group page we find the Search Bar on the left hand side of the screen and type Advance Tools then hit the Go button

You should get the image below.

• To prove that a web app was really created there is a domain URL you will find on the overview of our web app on azure. Click on that and be redirected to show it running status and its content

We also need to understand that Web Service are part of Platform As A Service (PaaS) model. With PaaS, the cloud provider manages underlying infrastructure, including virtual machine. When you create an App Service Plan, it allocates necessary resources such as CPU and memory, which the cloud provider uses to host your web application.

The Next question is;

HOW DO WE UPLOAD CONTENT INTO OUR WEB APP SINCE IT ALREADY HAS A WEB URL AND THE RUNNING STATUS IS CONFIRMED?

• Head back to ChatGpt Where we generated the code for our web service app. Then type combine all code in a single file.

• Next we head back to the Tab that was opened where we went to the Advance Tool page. Tap on Debug Console, a dropdown option will show with either CMD/Powershell. Select CMD.

• After Hitting CMD another page will show up we click on Site.

• The we click on the wwwroot this is the root folder of our Web App Service.

• Click on the pencil icon which is the second option, allows users to edit the code to our web app service.

• We are going to clear this default code and paste the combined code generated from ChatGpt for our web app. Then we hit save.

• We head back to our resource group for our app services, tap on the default domain to start our application.

I will also be showing where we can also push our code to other platforms that software developers use. For this purpose we are going to be using the deployment center in azure.

On the Overview Option of our resource group we search for Deployment Center on our Azure Portal. This will list a number of platforms we can push our code to.