Deploy precompiled Azure Functions from AppVeyor

With Azure Functions Tools for Visual Studio 2017 you can easily publish your Azure Functions project to Azure directly from Visual Studio. That is very simple.

However, if you want to deploy with a Continuous Integration tool, e.g. AppVeyor, you can do that as well. This article took me almost all the way, but that article is aimed at C# script files (.csx). To get it work with precompiled functions (.cs), there are some minor differences.

For this example, assume there is a folder src with an Azure Function project FunctionApp that has an Azure Function MyFunction. Everything is hosted by an App Service websitename.

Step 1

In the Artifacts section in AppVeyor, add an artifact:

• Path to artifact: src\FunctionApp\bin\Release\net461
• Deployment name: FunctionApp
• Type: Auto

Step 2

Login to your Azure Portal, open your Functions App, and click the Download publish profile button.

In the Deployments section in AppVeyor, add a deployment:

• Use Deployment Provider Web Deploy and copy and paste values from the MSDeploy section in the downloaded publish profile file:
  • Server: https://{publishUrl}/msdeploy.axd?site={msdeploySite}
  • Website name: {msdeploySite}
  • Username: {userName}
  • Password: {userPWD}
• In the Artifact to deploy textbox, enter the deployment name of the artifact created in step 1.

Step 3

In the Build section in AppVeyor, add a Release configuration to the build matrix.

Start a new build of the latest commit. That resulted in MSBuild giving me the following error message:

C:\path-to-repo\src\FunctionApp\FunctionApp.csproj.metaproj : warning MSB4078: The project file "src\FunctionApp\FunctionApp.csproj" is not supported by MSBuild and cannot be built.

In the Environment section in AppVeyor, change Build worker image to Visual Studio 2017 and start a new build again. That gave me this error message:

C:\Program Files\dotnet\sdk\2.0.0\Sdks\Microsoft.NET.Sdk\build\Microsoft.PackageDependencyResolution.targets(323,5): error : Assets file 'C:\path-to-repo\src\FunctionApp\obj\project.assets.json' not found. Run a NuGet package restore to generate this file. [C:\path-to-repo\src\FunctionApp\FunctionApp.csproj]

In the Build section in AppVeyor, add a Before build script of type CMD:

dotnet restore

Start a new build again.

Now, the build was successful and the deployment is completed.

Exported project configuration

The appveyor.yml file looks like this:

 version: 1.0.{build}
 image: Visual Studio 2017
 configuration: Release
 before_build:
 - cmd: dotnet restore
 build:
   verbosity: minimal
 artifacts:
 - path: src\FunctionApp\bin\Release\net461
   name: FunctionApp
 deploy:
 - provider: WebDeploy
   server: https://websitename.scm.azurewebsites.net:443/msdeploy.axd?site=websitename
   website: websitename
   username: $websitename
   password:
     secure: [password]
   artifact: FunctionApp