title	description	ms.topic	ms.date	ms.reviewer	ms.custom	author	ms.author
Configure CI/CD with GitHub Actions	Learn how to deploy your code to Azure App Service from a CI/CD pipeline with GitHub Actions. Customize the build tasks and execute complex deployments.	article	01/16/2024	ushan	github-actions-azure, devx-track-azurecli	cephalin	cephalin

Deploy to App Service using GitHub Actions

Get started with GitHub Actions to automate your workflow and deploy to Azure App Service from GitHub.

Prerequisites

An Azure account with an active subscription. Create an account for free.
A GitHub account. If you don't have one, sign up for free.

Set up GitHub Actions deployment when creating the app

GitHub Actions deployment is integrated into the default app creation wizard. You just need to set Continuous deployment to Enable in the Deployment tab, and configure the organization, repository, and branch you want.

:::image type="content" source="media/deploy-github-actions/create-wizard-deployment.png" alt-text="A screenshot showing how to enable GitHub Actions deployment in the App Service create wizard.":::

When you enable continuous deployment, the app creation wizard automatically picks the authentication method based on the basic authentication selection and configures your app and your GitHub repository accordingly:

Basic authentication selection	Authentication method
Disable	User-assigned identity (OpenID Connect) (recommended)
Enable	Basic authentication

Note

If you receive an error when creating your app saying that your Azure account doesn't have certain permissions, it may not have the required permissions to create and configure the user-assigned identity. For an alternative, see Set up GitHub Actions deployment from the Deployment Center.

Set up GitHub Actions deployment from the Deployment Center

For an existing app, you can get started quickly with GitHub Actions by using the App Service Deployment Center. This turn-key method automatically generates a GitHub Actions workflow file based on your application stack and commits it to your GitHub repository.

The Deployment Center also lets you easily configure the more secure OpenID Connect authentication with the user-assigned identity option.

If your Azure account has the needed permissions, you can select to create a user-assigned identity. Otherwise, you can select an existing user-assigned managed identity in the Identity dropdown. You can work with your Azure administrator to create a user-assigned managed identity with the Website Contributor role.

For more information, see Continuous deployment to Azure App Service.

Set up a GitHub Actions workflow manually

You can also deploy a workflow without using the Deployment Center. In that case you need to perform 3 steps:

Generate deployment credentials
Configure the GitHub secret
Add the workflow file to your GitHub repository

1. Generate deployment credentials

The recommended way to authenticate with Azure App Services for GitHub Actions is with OpenID Connect. This is an authentication method that uses short-lived tokens. Setting up OpenID Connect with GitHub Actions is more complex but offers hardened security.

Alternatively, you can authenticate with a User-assigned Managed Identity, a service principal, or a publish profile.

OpenID Connect

The below runs you through the steps for creating an active directory application, service principal, and federated credentials using Azure CLI statements. To learn how to create an active directory application, service principal, and federated credentials in Azure portal, see Connect GitHub and Azure.

If you don't have an existing application, register a new Active Directory application and service principal that can access resources. Create the Active Directory application.
```
az ad app create --display-name myApp
```
This command outputs a JSON with an appId that is your client-id. Save the value to use as the AZURE_CLIENT_ID GitHub secret later.

You'll use the objectId value when creating federated credentials with Graph API and reference it as the APPLICATION-OBJECT-ID.
Create a service principal. Replace the $appID with the appId from your JSON output.

This command generates JSON output with a different objectId and will be used in the next step. The new objectId is the assignee-object-id.

Copy the appOwnerTenantId to use as a GitHub secret for AZURE_TENANT_ID later.
```
 az ad sp create --id $appId
```
Create a new role assignment by subscription and object. By default, the role assignment is tied to your default subscription. Replace $subscriptionId with your subscription ID, $resourceGroupName with your resource group name, $webappName with your web app name, and $assigneeObjectId with the generated id. Learn how to manage Azure subscriptions with the Azure CLI.
```
az role assignment create --role contributor --subscription $subscriptionId --assignee-object-id  $assigneeObjectId --scope /subscriptions/$subscriptionId/resourceGroups/$resourceGroupName/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/$webappName --assignee-principal-type ServicePrincipal
```
Run the following command to create a new federated identity credential for your active directory application.
- Replace APPLICATION-OBJECT-ID with the appId (generated while creating app) for your Active Directory application.
- Set a value for CREDENTIAL-NAME to reference later.
- Set the subject. Its value is defined by GitHub depending on your workflow:
  - Jobs in your GitHub Actions environment: repo:< Organization/Repository >:environment:< Name >
  - For Jobs not tied to an environment, include the ref path for branch/tag based on the ref path used for triggering the workflow: repo:< Organization/Repository >:ref:< ref path>. For example, repo:n-username/ node_express:ref:refs/heads/my-branch or repo:n-username/ node_express:ref:refs/tags/my-tag.
  - For workflows triggered by a pull request event: repo:< Organization/Repository >:pull_request.
```
az ad app federated-credential create --id <APPLICATION-OBJECT-ID> --parameters credential.json
("credential.json" contains the following content)
{
    "name": "<CREDENTIAL-NAME>",
    "issuer": "https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com",
    "subject": "repo:organization/repository:ref:refs/heads/main",
    "description": "Testing",
    "audiences": [
        "api://AzureADTokenExchange"
    ]
}     
```

Publish profile

Note

Publish profile requires basic authentication to be enabled.

A publish profile is an app-level credential. Set up your publish profile as a GitHub secret.

Go to your app service in the Azure portal.
On the Overview page, select Get Publish profile.
Save the downloaded file. You'll use the contents of the file to create a GitHub secret.

Note

As of October 2020, Linux web apps needs the app setting WEBSITE_WEBDEPLOY_USE_SCM set to true before downloading the publish profile. This requirement will be removed in the future.

Service principal

You can create a service principal with the az ad sp create-for-rbac command in the Azure CLI. Run this command with Azure Cloud Shell in the Azure portal or by selecting the Try it button.

az ad sp create-for-rbac --name "myApp" --role contributor \
                            --scopes /subscriptions/<subscription-id>/resourceGroups/<group-name>/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/<app-name> \
                            --json-auth

In the previous example, replace the placeholders with your subscription ID, resource group name, and app name. The output is a JSON object with the role assignment credentials that provide access to your App Service app similar to the following JSON snippet. Copy this JSON object for later.

  {
    "clientId": "<GUID>",
    "clientSecret": "<GUID>",
    "subscriptionId": "<GUID>",
    "tenantId": "<GUID>",
    (...)
  }

Important

It is always a good practice to grant minimum access. The scope in the previous example is limited to the specific App Service app and not the entire resource group.

2. Configure the GitHub secret

OpenID Connect

You need to provide your application's Client ID, Tenant ID and Subscription ID to the Azure/login action. These values can either be provided directly in the workflow or can be stored in GitHub secrets and referenced in your workflow. Saving the values as GitHub secrets is the more secure option.

Open your GitHub repository and go to Settings > Security > Secrets and variables > Actions > New repository secret.
Create secrets for AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_TENANT_ID, and AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID. Use these values from your Active Directory application for your GitHub secrets:

GitHub Secret Active Directory Application

AZURE_CLIENT_ID Application (client) ID

AZURE_TENANT_ID Directory (tenant) ID

AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID Subscription ID
Save each secret by selecting Add secret.

Publish profile

In GitHub, browse your repository. Select Settings > Security > Secrets and variables > Actions > New repository secret.

To use app-level credentials, paste the contents of the downloaded publish profile file into the secret's value field. Name the secret AZURE_WEBAPP_PUBLISH_PROFILE.

When you configure the GitHub workflow file later, you use the AZURE_WEBAPP_PUBLISH_PROFILE in the deploy Azure Web App action. For example:

- uses: azure/webapps-deploy@v2
  with:
    publish-profile: ${{ secrets.AZURE_WEBAPP_PUBLISH_PROFILE }}

Service principal

In GitHub, browse your repository. Select Settings > Security > Secrets and variables > Actions > New repository secret.

To use user-level credentials, paste the entire JSON output from the Azure CLI command into the secret's value field. Name the secret AZURE_CREDENTIALS.

When you configure the GitHub workflow file later, you use the secret for the input creds of the Azure/login. For example:

- uses: azure/login@v1
  with:
    creds: ${{ secrets.AZURE_CREDENTIALS }}

3. Add the workflow file to your GitHub repository

A workflow is defined by a YAML (.yml) file in the /.github/workflows/ path in your GitHub repository. This definition contains the various steps and parameters that make up the workflow.

At a minimum, the workflow file would have the following distinct steps:

Authenticate with App Service using the GitHub secret you created.
Build the web app.
Deploy the web app.

To deploy your code to an App Service app, you use the azure/webapps-deploy@v3 action. The action requires the name of your web app in app-name and, depending on your language stack, the path of a *.zip, *.war, *.jar, or folder to deploy in package. For a complete list of possible inputs for the azure/webapps-deploy@v3 action, see the action.yml definition.

The following examples show the part of the workflow that builds the web app, in different supported languages.

OpenID Connect

[!INCLUDE deploy-github-actions-openid-connect]

Publish profile

[!INCLUDE deploy-github-actions-publish-profile]

Service principal

[!INCLUDE deploy-github-actions-service-principal]

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I deploy a WAR file through Maven plugin and OpenID Connect
How do I deploy a WAR file through Az CLI and OpenID Connect
How do I deploy to a Container
How do I update the Tomcat configuration after deployment

How do I deploy a WAR file through Maven plugin and OpenID Connect

In case you configured your Java Tomcat project with the Maven plugin, you can also deploy to Azure App Service through this plugin. If you use the Azure CLI GitHub action it will make use of your Azure login credentials.

    - name: Azure CLI script file
      uses: azure/cli@v2
      with:
        inlineScript: |
          mvn package azure-webapp:deploy

More information on the Maven plugin and how to use and configure it can be found in the Maven plugin wiki for Azure App Service.

How do I deploy a WAR file through Az CLI and OpenID Connect

If you use prefer the Azure CLI to deploy to App Service, you can use the GitHub Action for CLI.

    - name: Azure CLI script
      uses: azure/cli@v2
      with:
        inlineScript: |
          az webapp deploy --src-path '${{ github.workspace }}/target/yourpackage.war' --name ${{ env.AZURE_WEBAPP_NAME }} --resource-group ${{ env.RESOURCE_GROUP }}  --async true --type war

More information on the GitHub Action for CLI and how to use and configure it can be found in the Azure CLI GitHub action. More information on the az webapp deploy command, how to use and the parameter details can be found in the az webapp deploy documentation.

How do I deploy to a Container

With the Azure Web Deploy action, you can automate your workflow to deploy custom containers to App Service using GitHub Actions. Detailed information on the steps to deploy using GitHub Actions, can be found in the Deploy to a Container.

How do I update the Tomcat configuration after deployment

In case you would like to update any of your web apps settings after deployment, you can use the App Service Settings action.

    - uses: azure/appservice-settings@v1
      with:
        app-name: 'my-app'
        slot-name: 'staging'  # Optional and needed only if the settings have to be configured on the specific deployment slot
        app-settings-json: '[{ "name": "CATALINA_OPTS", "value": "-Dfoo=bar" }]' 
        connection-strings-json: '${{ secrets.CONNECTION_STRINGS }}'
        general-settings-json: '{"alwaysOn": "false", "webSocketsEnabled": "true"}' #'General configuration settings as Key Value pairs'
      id: settings

More information on this action and how to use and configure it can be found in the App Service Settings repository.

Next steps

Check out references on Azure GitHub Actions and workflows:

Azure/login action
Azure/webapps-deploy action
Docker/login action
Azure/k8s-deploy action
Actions workflows to deploy to Azure
Starter Workflows
Events that trigger workflows

Provide feedback

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deploy-github-actions.md

deploy-github-actions.md

Deploy to App Service using GitHub Actions

Prerequisites

Set up GitHub Actions deployment when creating the app

Set up GitHub Actions deployment from the Deployment Center

Set up a GitHub Actions workflow manually

1. Generate deployment credentials

OpenID Connect

Publish profile

Service principal

2. Configure the GitHub secret

OpenID Connect

Publish profile

Service principal

3. Add the workflow file to your GitHub repository

OpenID Connect

Publish profile

Service principal

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I deploy a WAR file through Maven plugin and OpenID Connect

How do I deploy a WAR file through Az CLI and OpenID Connect

How do I deploy to a Container

How do I update the Tomcat configuration after deployment

Next steps

GitHub Secret	Active Directory Application
AZURE_CLIENT_ID	Application (client) ID
AZURE_TENANT_ID	Directory (tenant) ID
AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID	Subscription ID

Files

deploy-github-actions.md

Latest commit

History

deploy-github-actions.md

File metadata and controls

Deploy to App Service using GitHub Actions

Prerequisites

Set up GitHub Actions deployment when creating the app

Set up GitHub Actions deployment from the Deployment Center

Set up a GitHub Actions workflow manually

1. Generate deployment credentials

2. Configure the GitHub secret

3. Add the workflow file to your GitHub repository

Frequently Asked Questions

How do I deploy a WAR file through Maven plugin and OpenID Connect

How do I deploy a WAR file through Az CLI and OpenID Connect

How do I deploy to a Container

How do I update the Tomcat configuration after deployment

Next steps