Continuous deployment for Azure web apps

Over the past decade, Azure has emerged as a leading cloud computing platform, second only to AWS, with Azure web apps offering a managed environment for hosting applications in various languages. While developers face limitations in controlling the deployment process, this tutorial guides users through building a custom pipeline to regain control over deployments, allowing for pre-deployment testing. Prerequisites for this process include Node.js, and accounts with Azure, CircleCI, and GitHub. The tutorial outlines a strategy to use CircleCI for automated testing on GitHub pushes, deploying applications to Azure Web Apps if tests pass. It also involves creating an Azure service principal for secure CLI-based deployments and configuring CircleCI with necessary environment variables to automate the CI/CD pipeline. This setup enables efficient, reliable deployments and mirrors DevOps principles by integrating CircleCI’s capabilities with Azure’s scalability, ensuring a streamlined workflow for developers and engineers.