I use Azure websites and my project must have an empty folder on the server. When I publish the project from the Solution Explorer (VS 2013), I don't get it created on the server.
For now, I keep an empty file there to force the creation but I was wondering if there is a proper way to make the publish process create it for me.
Assuming you are WebDeploy from VS to publish your site, I think the only way to force creating a folder is to have it on your client side. If you use kudu you can look at post deployment actions
I would suggest updating your code though to create the folder if it doesn't exist. That would make your code more robust and self contained rather than depending on a certain deployment mechanism to create the folder for you.
Related
We have an Website project that's hosted in Azure, and we use Web.config transforms for setting environment variables. However, our current approach for building the system for different environments is to build the project multiple times (currently this is 3), which is inefficient.
We'd like to move to using Web Deploy, as this would then set us up nicely for using Release Manager.
Our issue is around using Web Deploy parameters instead of web.config transforms; we need to substitute multiple xml elements, rather than single values.
After much research, I found these 2 articles which detail almost exactly what I'm trying to do
http://blogs.iis.net/elliotth/web-deploy-xml-file-parameterization
http://www.iis.net/learn/publish/using-web-deploy/parameterization-improvements-in-web-deploy-v3
Essentially I'm trying to replicate Scenario 5, but using a separate Set Parameter file for the value.
Unfortunately, in the examples, referencing an external xml file only works if it is on the target machine. Some testing with a colleague confirmed this; works on local machine, but not on Azure.
Is there a way I can force Web Deploy to look in a particular location for the external configuration files?
As you've already noticed, Web Deploy is only able to read replacement values on the local machine or on a UNC share. It can't read that specific file over HTTP.
If you're deploying to an Azure Web App, then one thing you could try would be to use Kudu/FTP to manually upload that file one level above your wwwroot folder. Then you could specify the file location like so:
D:\home\site\prices.xml:://book[#name='book1']/price
Of course this implies that you'd have to pre-upload this file before publishing to your site, so it's not a perfect solution, but it should work for what you're trying to accomplish.
I have a web job that uses an exe that is best called when it is sitting in a directory and can be located. The problem is that I don't know how to get this exe to be published with the web job. I tried using a resources folder in the webjob project and copying them to output directory but that didn't upload them and so the only other option I can think of is uploading the files to a non temporary directory on the web site but that is leaking the encapsulation of the web job.
Any thoughts?
When you use visual studio to publish a webjob, it publishes all its dependencies as well. ie VS pushes all the dependencies available under the bin folder. So, add a reference to the dependent project and VS will take care of publishing this dependency as well.
For a project I am currently working on, I need to create a setup application for an existing desktop application. The setup application will be downloaded from a website, and will download required files to the correct locations. When the application is started, it will look for newer versions of these files, download them if any exist, then start the application.
I am using Visual Studio Online with TFVC, linked to Azure. I have a test application set up so that when I trigger a build, Release Management finds the build directory, and moves the files to Azure Blob Storage, but prepends a GUID to the file names being transferred. So what I have in my storage container is:
{Some GUID}/2390/Test.exe
{Some GUID}/2389/Test.exe
{Some GUID}/2387/Test.exe
...
What I want in my container is the latest version of Test.exe, so I can connect to the container, and determine whether I want to download or not.
I have put together a NullSoft installer that checks a website, and downloads files. I have also written a NullSoft "launcher" that will compare local file versions with versions on the website (using a version xml file on the website), and download if newer, then launch the application. What I need to figure out is how to get the newer files to the website after a build, with automation being one of the goals.
I am an intern, and new to deployment in general, and I don't even know if I'm going about this the right way.
Questions:
Does what I am doing make sense for what I am trying to accomplish?
We are trying to emulate ClickOnce functionality, but can't use ClickOnce due to the fact that the application dynamically loads a number of DLLs. Is there a way to configure ClickOnce to include non-referenced DLLs?
Is there a best practice for doing what I'm describing?
I appreciate any advice, links to references, or real-world examples.
You are mentioning ClickOnce, which you investigated but can't use. Have you already tried an alternative: Squirrel? With Squirrel you can specify which files should be part of the installation, allowing you to explicitly specify which files to include even if you load them dynamically.
Link: https://github.com/Squirrel/Squirrel.Windows
Squirrel is a full framework for creating an auto-update application and can work with Azure Blob Storage hosting (and also CDN if you need to scale up)
I'm attempting to use Web Deploy to Publish a Web Application.
I want Visual Studio to delete any files that no longer exist, so I've checked the "Remove additional files at destination" setting in my Publishing profile.
However, I want VS to ignore the /Content/uploads folder, as it contains contents that my users have uploaded. Naturally, the contents are different in my development site than they are in the live site.
Unfortunately, I have been unable to discover a way to make Visual Studio ignore this folder when publishing (it wants to delete all of the content, since it doesn't exist in the project).
Does anyone know of a way to exclude specific folders on the target site from being examined by Web Deploy?
I had a similar problem, wanting to keep some files in the deployment package even though they're not part of the project.
Try to create a custom MSBuild target for this, that works for me.
Here is a Getting Started MSBuild reference
Hope this helps.
All the best.
I was unable to find a suitable solution for this issue, so I've created my own:
https://pubsync.codeplex.com/
PubSync enables quick and reliable file syncing for publishing Visual Studio projects.
I have a brilliantly designed app_offline.htm file that I'd like to display on my site periodically when I'm doing things like backing up the DB. On a server with a real file system, this wouldn't be a problem: I'd just copy app_offline.htm to the my app's root, and IIS will work its magic and redirect all requests to this file.
However, I'm using Azure, so there's no real file system and there's no easy way move files around from one location to another.
How I can I make app_offline.htm play nicely with Azure?
I figured I'd add this, I haven't seen it mentioned yet. You can actually do this via web publish from Visual Studio (or WebMatrix) as well, just put app_offline.htm in the root of your project - the same level as your main web.config. When done, just rename it and redeploy to go back online. 2 clicks - easy.
The manual option is to drop it into your /site/wwwroot via FTP.
A little personal secret, none of your site files will be accessible, style sheets etc. So put your includes into an azure blob container, and viola.
Actually there is a real file system, as each VM instance runs on Windows 2008 Server (SP2 or R2 SP1). To see this for yourself, enable Remote Desktop for your deployment and connect to a running instance.
Knowing this, you should be able to set up a mechanism to perform a file-copy of your app_offline.htm to your app root based on some type of administrative command. You'll just need to make sure each of your web role instances perform this action.
David has provided you with a good answer. However, you might be missing out on what Azure can do for you. You should be able to virtually eliminate down time with Azure by running multiple instances and using SQL Azure which is triple backed up for you. You can also backup SQL Azure using http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/ff951624.aspx