In the previous step you created a simple Flask Web App that showed 'Hello World' when run. In this step you will deploy this Web App to the cloud.
In the last step, you ran the Web App on your local computer. This means that you can see the web page, but it is not available to anyone else. To make it available, it needs to run on a computer somewhere that is accessible over the internet. Cloud services allow you to easily deploy your Web Sites to computers running in the cloud. The Cloud service available from Microsoft is called Azure, and this runs all around the world.
Running web sites used to be a lot of work. You would need to configure a computer connected to the internet, install software to host the web site, connect it to the internet with a domain name, configure security so hackers couldn't break in, and ensure everything is backed up in case of something breaking. For busy sites you might want to configure multiple computers to spread the load, and services to ensure one computer doesn't get overloaded handling requests. Now, thanks to services in the cloud you can just deploy your code and let the cloud provided make everything else work.
Using your Azure subscription, you will be able to deploy your code to the cloud, with Azure managing all the complexities for you using Azure App Service. You configure an App Service and send your code to it, and Azure handles the rest.
You can configure an Azure App Service and deploy your code from inside Visual Studio Code.
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Open the command palette:
- On Windows, press Ctrl+Shift+P
- On MacOS, press Cmd+Shift+P
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Select Azure App Service: Deploy to Web App...
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If you have never signed into Azure from Visual Studio Code before, you will be asked to sign in.
- Select Sign in to Azure...
- Your browser will be launched, and you can sign in with your Azure account.
- Once signed in from the browser, you can close the web page that was launched.
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Select the Azure subscription you want to use.
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Select + Create New Web App
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Give your web app a name. This will be part of the public web site address, so needs to be unique across the world. For example, I might use
jimspythonwebapp2019.
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Select the runtime for your App Service App. This is a Python app, so select the latest version of the Python runtime, such as Python 3.7
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The App Service will be created You will see a progress bar on the bottom right, and this will show you once it is complete. You can monitor the progress from the Output window by selecting View -> Output and selecting Azure App Service from the window selector..
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Once the App Service has been created, you will be asked what code you want to deploy. This option will automatically select the folder with your code in it, so select that.
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Some popups wil appear asking if you want to make configuration changes to speed up deployment and always deploy this web app. Select Yes for both.
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A popup will appear showing the deployment progress. You can monitor the progress from the Output window by selecting View -> Output and selecting Azure App Service from the window selector.
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Once the code has been deployed, you will be able to view the code over the internet. Launch your browser and open your web site. The address will be
https://<web app name>.azurewebsites.net/. For example, for my web site this ishttps://jimspythonwebapp2019.azurewebsites.net/. You will see the'Hello World'page.
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Try this from different devices such as your phone. This web site is available anywhere.
In this step you deployed your Web App to the cloud, hosted in Azure. In the next step, you will add a route to this app to provide a Web Api to accept a photo that can be sent by the app.