Static Website Hosting Options Comparison

5 posts · Oct 2020 – Aug 2021

What this trail covers

This thread tracks the evolution of static website hosting options on Azure. It now includes a detailed walkthrough of setting up a CI/CD pipeline for Azure Static Web Apps when the source code is hosted on GitHub and the CI/CD pipeline is managed by Azure DevOps. The post covers updating the pipeline to use the GitHub REST API for commenting on pull requests, generating GitHub Personal Access Tokens, and configuring pull request validation, including security considerations for forks. It also provides the YAML configuration for the pipeline.

All Microsoft trails

Aug 2021Developer Best Practices - Structuring Your Repository for Static Web AppsThis post addresses a security best practice for Azure Static Web Apps deployments by identifying and resolving the risk of exposing pipeline YAML files. The author demonstrates how deploying an application from the root of a repository can lead to the public accessibility of the CI/CD pipeline's YAML configuration. The solution involves creating a 'src' folder, moving application files into it, and updating the pipeline configuration to reference this new directory. This prevents the direct exposure of the YAML file and enhances the security posture of the deployment.
Jul 2021Comparing Azure Static Web Apps vs Azure WebApps vs Azure Blob Storage Static SitesThis post introduces Azure Static Web Apps as a generally available service and compares it against Azure Web Apps and Azure Blob Storage Static Websites. It details the built-in features of Azure Static Web Apps, such as integrated API support via Azure Functions, first-class GitHub and Azure DevOps integration for CI/CD, globally distributed static content, free SSL certificates, custom domains, a seamless security model for API calls, authentication provider integrations, customizable authorization, routing rules, and generated staging versions powered by pull requests. It also outlines the use cases for Azure Web Apps for applications requiring server-side logic and database services, and notes the limitations of Azure Blob Storage Static Websites for hosting static sites without additional services for scaling and CI/CD.
Nov 2020Static Web App PR Workflow for Azure App Service using Azure DevOps Pt 2 (But what if my code is in GitHub)This post details how to adapt an existing Azure Static Web App PR workflow to use GitHub as the source code repository instead of Azure Repos. Key changes include: 1. Replacing the Azure DevOps REST API call for adding PR comments with a call to the GitHub REST API, requiring a GitHub Personal Access Token (PAT). 2. Generating and securely storing the GitHub PAT as a pipeline variable. 3. Updating the PowerShell script to use the GitHub API for posting comments to the PR. 4. Configuring Azure Pipelines to enable pull request validation for GitHub repositories, including options for handling forks and making secrets available to fork builds. 5. Providing the complete YAML configuration for the updated pipeline.
Oct 2020Static Web App PR Workflow for Azure App Service Using Azure DevOpsThis post details how to replicate the dynamic staging environment provisioning and PR commenting workflow of Azure Static Web Apps for applications hosted on Azure App Service using Azure Repos and Azure Pipelines. It outlines the steps to enable builds for every pull request, provision dynamic deployment slots using Azure CLI, deploy the app to these slots, and comment the staging URL back to the pull request using Azure DevOps REST API. The post provides specific Bash script examples for these tasks and includes YAML for the pipeline.
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