Before creating the database, we need to create a database server for the SQL database. Click on the “Server configure required settings” and then click “Create a new server”. It will open a “New server” window, as shown in the image below.
- Server name: Provide a name for your DB server. Here, we will use ddldemoserver. The DB server will be created by appending “.database.windows.net” to the user provided server name. Hence, the server name will be “ddldbserver.database.windows.net” in this case.
- Server admin login: Put an admin login name for your DB server.
- Password: Put the login password corresponding to the admin login for your DB server.
- Location: Select a location for your server from the drop-down.
Check the “Allow Azure services to access server” checkbox and click on “Select” to create your DB Server.
Important Note
The word “admin” is restricted for the administrator username of the database server. Use any other username than “admin”.
Once the DB server gets created, you will be redirected to the “SQL Database” window. You need to click on the “Create” button to create your database.
Here is the whole process explained in a gif.
Creating DB tables
The database DDLDemodb do not contain the tables that we are using in our application. We will connect to the Azure database using SQL Server Management Studio (SSMS) to create our DB objects.
Open SSMS in your machine and put the server name as “ddldbserver.database.windows.net”. Provide the admin user id and password that you have configured in the previous section and click on “Connect”.
You will get a pop-up window for configuring the firewall rule to access the Azure DB. Log in with your Azure account credentials and add your machine IP address under “Firewall rule”. Click on OK to connect to the Azure database server. Refer to the image below,
Once the connection is successful, you can see the DDLDemodb database on the server.
Setting the DB connection string
After creating the database objects, we need to replace the connection string of local database in our application with the connection string of the Azure database.
Open the Azure portal and click on “SQL databases” on the left menu. It will open a window displaying the list of all the databases that you created on the Azure portal. Click on “DDLDemodb” database and then select “connection strings” from the menu. Select “ADO.NET” tab and copy the connection string. Refer to the image below,
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You need to put the admin user id and password for the database server that you have configured earlier in this connection string.
Open BlazorDDL application using Visual Studio, navigate to BlazorDDL.Shared/Models/myTestDBContext.cs and replace the local connection string with this new connection string.
Launch your application from Visual Studio to verify if the new connection string is configured correctly and you are able to access the Azure database.
If the application is not working and you are unable to connect to the database then check if your connection string is correct or not. Once the application is working as expected in your local machine then move to the next section to publish it on Azure.
Publishing Blazor application to Azure
To publish the Blazor app on Azure, Right-click on Server project of your solution and click publish. In this case, it will be BlazorDDL.Server >> Publish.
It will open “Pick a publish target” window. Select “App Service” from the left menu. Select “Create New” radio button and click on “Create profile”. Refer to the image below,
The next window will ask you to login to your Azure account if you are not logged in. Once the login is successful, a “Create App Service” window will open. Refer to the image below,
The fields of this window are prepopulated as per the configuration of your Azure account. However, you can change these values as per your requirement.
You can fill in the details as mentioned below,
- App Name: Provide an app name for your application. The app name is subject to availability. If the app name you provided is already in use then you need to give a new app name. The website’s public URL will be App Name followed by ".azurewebsites.net". Here we are using the name as BlazorDDLDemo, hence the URL for our website will be "BlazorDDLDemo.azurewebsites.net".
- Subscription: Select your subscription type from the drop-down list.
- Resource Group: Select your resource group name, which is BlazorDDLGroup in this case.
- Hosting Plan: You can either use the existing plan or select a new plan by clicking on “New…” link.
- Application Insights: You can choose a value from the dropdown list. It will provide analytics for your website.
Click on the “Create” button to start the application deployment on Azure. It will take a few minutes to complete depending on your internet connection speed.
After the deployment is successful, click on the “Publish” button to publish the app to Azure. Once the application is published successfully, the website will be launched automatically in the default browser of your machine. You can also access the website using the URL BlazorDDLDemo.azurewebsites.net.
You can see the application in your browser as shown in the image below,
Conclusion
In this article, we learned how to deploy and publish a Blazor application on Azure. We created a SQL database and DB server on Azure and used it in our application to handle the DB operations.
See Also