Using the Provided Azure Blob Storage Deploy Completion Handler

SitecoreDXG includes the Azure Blob Storage Deploy Completion Handler for deploying the generated output to an Azure Blob Storage container. Using this completion handler, you can rapidly configure your CI/CD infrastructure to generate updated Sitecore template architecture documentation on every build, and then publish the generated HTML-based documentation to Azure for live viewing. This ensures that you always have an up-to-date and live documentation site for your architecture that you can optionally share with clients, internal teams, or other groups and individuals.

Important Note about Azure Blob Storage and Static Website Hosting

It should be noted that Static Website Hosting directly from Azure Blob Storage is, as of the date of this writing, in technical preview. The functionality was released to preview in August, and appears to be working correctly in tests run prior to and following the development of this completion handler. It is not expected that the completion handler will require any significant changes after the static hosting feature exits technical preview for an initial release.

Setup

1. Go to the Azure portal and create and/or retrieve the details for the Azure Blob Storage account and container that you want to use. You will need the connection string for your ABS account, the name of the container that you want to deploy to (must exist, and should be $web as it is created automatically when enabling your storage account for Static Hosting) and (optionally) the name of the directory within that container that you want to deploy to

   1. See the Getting Started instructions provided by Azure for more information

   2. IMPORTANT: make sure that you select "General Purpose v2" (GPv2) for your storage account type, as this cannot be changed later and currently only GPv2 supports static website hosting

2. (Optional) if you wish to set the completion handler as the default then update the DefaultCompletionHandlers property in the ./settings.js file of the SitecoreDXG Generation Service with required settings for calling the completion handler

3. If you are running the SitecoreDXG Generation Service as a Windows service then you need to restart the service

WARNING: You should always deploy to an empty directory

The ABS Deploy Completion Handler is designed to perform clean deployments, meaning that any files in the targeted deployment directory in the Azure Blob Storage container will be deleted immediately prior to the deployment. You can use the AzureStorageTargetDirectory parameter to set the target deployment location to somewhere other than the container's root (the default). Note that anything in the target directory (or the root if the target directory is not set) will be deleted.

Parameters

The Azure Blob Storage Deploy Completion Handler requires a JSON object parameter with the following syntax:

{
    "AzureStorageAccountConnectionString": "YOUR_ABS_CONNECTION_STRING",
    "AzureStorageContainer": "$web",
    "AzureStorageTargetDirectory": "MySite/UAT"
}

In order to pass this object to the handler, it should be passed in as the Params object of the completion handler data in stored in the JSON file at the OPTIONS_FILE_PATH. The following illustrates the completion handler data object for the Azure Blob Storage Deploy Completion Handler within the completion handler data array:

[{
    "ID": "Azure_ABS",
    "Params": {
        "AzureStorageAccountConnectionString": "YOUR_ABS_CONNECTION_STRING",
        "AzureStorageContainer": "$web",
        "AzureStorageTargetDirectory": "MySite/UAT"
    }
}]

Important Note About Folders in Azure Blob Storage

Azure Blob Storage doesn't have a real concept of "folders", but it can be made to behave similar to the way you would expect it to if it did have folders, so long as you use a forward slash (/) as the delimiter of your path slugs. For example, in the above, the value "MySite/UAT" will effectively function as though the /UAT folder is a subdirectory of /MySite.

Calling the Azure Blob Storage Deploy Handler Data from the Middleman

This section describes how you can call the Azure Blob Storage Deploy Handler from the default RabbitMQ Middleman as well the provided TeamCity Meta-Runner.

1. Complete the steps described in the Setup section, above, on your SitecoreDXG Generation Server

2. Create your completion handler data object for the Azure Blob Storage Deploy Handler, as described above in the Parameters section, for example:

   {"CompletionHandlers":[{"ID":"Azure_ABS","Params":{"AzureStorageAccountConnectionString":"DefaultEndpointsProtocol=https;AccountName=sitecoredxg;AccountKey=MY_ACCOUNT_KEY;EndpointSuffix=core.windows.net","AzureStorageContainer":"$web","AzureStorageTargetDirectory":"MySite/UAT"}}]}

3. Save the JSON object to your OPTIONS_FILE_PATH

4. Pass the OPTIONS_FILE_PATH to the middleman so that it can be passed to the Trigger and subsequently to the Generator

   1. If using the default RabbitMQ middleman: see Using the Default RabbitMQ Middleman and Trigger for more information on the middleman parameters and syntax

   2. If using the provided TeamCity Meta-Runner: see Integrating the Default TeamCity RabbitMQ Meta-Runner for more information on the fields and syntax