Template Populator

This projects provides the code for an Azure function that receives

1. the URL's of a docx template document
2. a map of how to fill in the template
3. an output path where the resulting pdf will be stored The storage media are blob storages. The template populator applies the map to the document and saves it as a pdf.

Requirements

• Azure account and subscription
• Terraform
• Azure CLI
• Libre Office (for local development)
• Docker (for local development)

Setup

Secrets

Create secrets/config.sh as such

export SUBSCRIPTION_ID="..."
export PROJECT_NAME="..."
export ENV_NAME="..."
# check your user's object ID in Azure Entra ID
export TF_VAR_owners_entra_object_ids='["..."]'
export AZURE_DEVOPS_ORG_URL="https://dev.azure.com/..."
export AZURE_DEVOPS_PAT="..."

Generate an ssh key ssh-keygen -t rsa for the login on the DevOps VM at path: secrets/id_devopsvm

Deployment

First, deploy the authorization, networking and CICD VM.

./cicd/deploy_infrastructure_core.sh apply

Then, load or update the code on the DevOps VM

./cicd/vm_load_code.sh

Upload secrets that were created during the core deployment (e.g. service principal)

./cicd/vm_setup.sh

Login

./cicd/vm_login.sh

and deploy application layer infrastructure

cd ~/TemplatePopulator
./cicd/deploy_infrastructure_platform.sh apply

Probably, this command has to be run twice as the private endpoint configuration has an Azure-internal delay that Terraform doesn't take into account properly. There would be a 403 Error while reading the container states of the storage account.

Deploy the app

sudo ./cicd/deploy_template_populator.sh

Example

export PROJECT_ROOT=$(pwd)
source cicd/config.sh
export STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME=$TF_VAR_sta_name
export FUNC_APP_NAME=$TF_VAR_func_app_name
export FUNC_KEY="..."

MacOs - ZShell

curl -v -G https://${FUNC_APP_NAME}.azurewebsites.net/api/healthcheck?code=${FUNC_KEY}

az storage blob upload -f template_populator/test_data/TestTemplate.docx --account-name ${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME} -c templates -n TestTemplate.docx

curl -X POST -v -H 'x-functions-key: ${FUNC_KEY}' -H 'Content-Type: application/json' -d '{"placeholder_map": {"PLACEHOLDER": "world"}, "template_docx_blob_path": "https://${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME}.blob.core.windows.net/templates/TestTemplate.docx", "document_pdf_blob_path": "https://${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME}.blob.core.windows.net/documents/test_document_123.pdf"}' 'https://${FUNC_APP_NAME}.azurewebsites.net/api/populated-document'

az storage blob download -f test_document_123.pdf --account-name ${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME} -c documents -n test_document_123.pdf

az storage blob delete --account-name ${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME} -c documents -n test_document_123.pdf
az storage blob delete --account-name ${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME} -c templates -n TestTemplate.docx

Ubuntu - Bash

curl -v -G https://${FUNC_APP_NAME}.azurewebsites.net/api/healthcheck?code=${FUNC_KEY}

az storage blob upload -f template_populator/test_data/TestTemplate.docx --account-name ${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME} -c templates -n TestTemplate.docx

curl -X POST -v -H "x-functions-key: ${FUNC_KEY}" -H "Content-Type: application/json" -d "{\"placeholder_map\": {\"PLACEHOLDER\": \"world\"}, \"template_docx_blob_path\": \"https://${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME}.blob.core.windows.net/templates/TestTemplate.docx\", \"document_pdf_blob_path\": \"https://${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME}.blob.core.windows.net/documents/test_document_123.pdf\"}" https://${FUNC_APP_NAME}.azurewebsites.net/api/populated-document

az storage blob delete --account-name ${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME} -c documents -n test_document_123.pdf
az storage blob delete --account-name ${STORAGE_ACCOUNT_NAME} -c templates -n TestTemplate.docx

Local development

1. conda create -p ./venv python=3.11
2. pip install -r requirements.txt
3. pip install -e .

If you have to modify the environment to run tests locally, create a dot-env file .env.

Config

This project uses dotenv. The configuration hierarchy is (highest to lowest)

1. Environment variables
2. .env file
3. default values in cfg.py, check this file to figure out what environment variables are relevant

Tests

pytest

Run function locally

cd az_func
func start

Run container locally

export PROJECT_ROOT=$(pwd)
docker build -t  -f ${PROJECT_ROOT}/az_func/Dockerfile ${PROJECT_ROOT}
docker run --rm -it -p 7071:80 tpopdevacr.azurecr.io/tpopdevfuncimg:latest
Request `curl http://localhost:7071/api/healthcheck`

Clean up

Login

./cicd/vm_login.sh
cd TemplatePopulator

Destroy application layer

./cicd/destroy_infrastructure_platform.sh

exit the VM and destroy the core infrastructure

./cicd/destroy_infrastructure_core.sh

ToDo

• Mange most secrets in a key vault
• DevOps VM authentication (maybe assign the service principal as a user assigned identity)

Architecture

Infrastructure

Code