Create a Ruby on Rails App in App Service

• 07/11/2019
• 6 minutes to read
• • c
  • j
  • D

Azure App Service on Linux provides a highly scalable, self-patching web hosting service using the Linux operating system. This quickstart tutorial shows how to deploy a Ruby on Rails app to App Service on Linux using the Cloud Shell.

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a free account before you begin.

Prerequisites

• Install Ruby 2.6 or higher
• Install Git

Download the sample

In a terminal window, run the following command to clone the sample app repository to your local machine:

git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/ruby-docs-hello-world

Run the application locally

Run the application locally so that you see how it should look when you deploy it to Azure. Open a terminal window, change to the hello-world directory, and use the rails server command to start the server.

The first step is to install the required gems. There's a Gemfile included in the sample, so just run the following command:

bundle install

Once the gems are installed, we'll use bundler to start the app:

bundle exec rails server

Using your web browser, navigate to http://localhost:3000 to test the app locally.

Use Azure Cloud Shell

Azure hosts Azure Cloud Shell, an interactive shell environment that you can use through your browser. You can use either Bash or PowerShell with Cloud Shell to work with Azure services. You can use the Cloud Shell preinstalled commands to run the code in this article without having to install anything on your local environment.

To start Azure Cloud Shell:

Option	Example/Link
Select Try It in the upper-right corner of a code block. Selecting Try It doesn't automatically copy the code to Cloud Shell.
Go to https://shell.azure.com, or select the Launch Cloud Shell button to open Cloud Shell in your browser.
Select the Cloud Shell button on the menu bar at the upper right in the Azure portal.

To run the code in this article in Azure Cloud Shell:

1. Start Cloud Shell.

2. Select the Copy button on a code block to copy the code.

3. Paste the code into the Cloud Shell session by selecting Ctrl+Shift+V on Windows and Linux or by selecting Cmd+Shift+V on macOS.

4. Select Enter to run the code.

Configure a deployment user

FTP and local Git can deploy to an Azure web app by using a deployment user. Once you configure your deployment user, you can use it for all your Azure deployments. Your account-level deployment username and password are different from your Azure subscription credentials.

To configure the deployment user, run the az webapp deployment user set command in Azure Cloud Shell. Replace <username> and <password> with a deployment user username and password.

• The username must be unique within Azure, and for local Git pushes, must not contain the ‘@’ symbol.
• The password must be at least eight characters long, with two of the following three elements: letters, numbers, and symbols.

az webapp deployment user set --user-name <username> --password <password>

The JSON output shows the password as null. If you get a 'Conflict'. Details: 409 error, change the username. If you get a 'Bad Request'. Details: 400 error, use a stronger password.

Record your username and password to use to deploy your web apps.

Create a resource group

A resource group is a logical container into which Azure resources, such as web apps, databases, and storage accounts, are deployed and managed. For example, you can choose to delete the entire resource group in one simple step later.

In the Cloud Shell, create a resource group with the az group create command. The following example creates a resource group named myResourceGroup in the West Europe location. To see all supported locations for App Service on Linux in Basic tier, run the az appservice list-locations --sku B1 --linux-workers-enabled command.

az group create --name myResourceGroup --location "West Europe"

You generally create your resource group and the resources in a region near you.

When the command finishes, a JSON output shows you the resource group properties.

Create an Azure App Service plan

In the Cloud Shell, create an App Service plan in the resource group with the az appservice plan create command.

The following example creates an App Service plan named myAppServicePlan in the Free pricing tier (--sku F1) and in a Linux container (--is-linux).

az appservice plan create --name myAppServicePlan --resource-group myResourceGroup --sku F1 --is-linux

When the App Service plan has been created, the Azure CLI shows information similar to the following example:

{ 
  "adminSiteName": null,
  "appServicePlanName": "myAppServicePlan",
  "geoRegion": "West Europe",
  "hostingEnvironmentProfile": null,
  "id": "/subscriptions/0000-0000/resourceGroups/myResourceGroup/providers/Microsoft.Web/serverfarms/myAppServicePlan",
  "kind": "linux",
  "location": "West Europe",
  "maximumNumberOfWorkers": 1,
  "name": "myAppServicePlan",
  <JSON data removed for brevity.>
  "targetWorkerSizeId": 0,
  "type": "Microsoft.Web/serverfarms",
  "workerTierName": null
} 

Create a web app

Create a web app in the myAppServicePlan App Service plan.

In the Cloud Shell, you can use the az webapp create command. In the following example, replace <app-name> with a globally unique app name (valid characters are a-z, 0-9, and -). The runtime is set to RUBY|2.6.2. To see all supported runtimes, run az webapp list-runtimes --linux.

# Bash
az webapp create --resource-group myResourceGroup --plan myAppServicePlan --name <app-name> --runtime "RUBY|2.6.2" --deployment-local-git
# PowerShell
az --% webapp create --resource-group myResourceGroup --plan myAppServicePlan --name <app-name> --runtime "RUBY|2.6.2" --deployment-local-git

When the web app has been created, the Azure CLI shows output similar to the following example:

Local git is configured with url of 'https://<username>@<app-name>.scm.azurewebsites.net/<app-name>.git'
{
  "availabilityState": "Normal",
  "clientAffinityEnabled": true,
  "clientCertEnabled": false,
  "cloningInfo": null,
  "containerSize": 0,
  "dailyMemoryTimeQuota": 0,
  "defaultHostName": "<app-name>.azurewebsites.net",
  "deploymentLocalGitUrl": "https://<username>@<app-name>.scm.azurewebsites.net/<app-name>.git",
  "enabled": true,
  < JSON data removed for brevity. >
}

You’ve created an empty new web app, with git deployment enabled.

Browse to the app to see your newly created web app with built-in image. Replace <app name> with your web app name.

http://<app_name>.azurewebsites.net

Here is what your new web app should look like:

Deploy your application

Run the following commands to deploy the local application to your Azure web app:

git remote add azure <Git deployment URL from above>
git push azure main

Confirm that the remote deployment operations report success. The commands produce output similar to the following text:

remote: Using turbolinks 5.2.0
remote: Using uglifier 4.1.20
remote: Using web-console 3.7.0
remote: Bundle complete! 18 Gemfile dependencies, 78 gems now installed.
remote: Bundled gems are installed into `/tmp/bundle`
remote: Zipping up bundle contents
remote: .......
remote: ~/site/repository
remote: Finished successfully.
remote: Running post deployment command(s)...
remote: Deployment successful.
remote: App container will begin restart within 10 seconds.
To https://<app-name>.scm.azurewebsites.net/<app-name>.git
   a6e73a2..ae34be9  main -> main

Once the deployment has completed, wait about 10 seconds for the web app to restart, and then navigate to the web app and verify the results.

http://<app-name>.azurewebsites.net

Clean up deployment

After the sample script has been run, the following command can be used to remove the resource group and all resources associated with it.

az group delete --name myResourceGroup

Next steps