Quickstart: Deploy Bicep files by using GitHub Actions

Article
01/22/2024

GitHub Actions is a suite of features in GitHub to automate your software development workflows. In this quickstart, you use the GitHub Actions for Azure Resource Manager deployment to automate deploying a Bicep file to Azure.

It provides a short introduction to GitHub actions and Bicep files. If you want more detailed steps on setting up the GitHub actions and project, see Deploy Azure resources by using Bicep and GitHub Actions.

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.
A GitHub repository to store your Bicep files and your workflow files. To create one, see Creating a new repository.

Create resource group

Create a resource group. Later in this quickstart, you'll deploy your Bicep file to this resource group.

CLI
PowerShell

az group create -n exampleRG -l westus

New-AzResourceGroup -Name exampleRG -Location westus

Your GitHub Actions run under an identity. Use the az ad sp create-for-rbac command to create a service principal for the identity. Grant the service principal the contributor role for the resource group created in the previous session so that the GitHub action with the identity can create resources in this resource group. It is recommended that you grant minimum required access.

az ad sp create-for-rbac --name {app-name} --role contributor --scopes /subscriptions/{subscription-id}/resourceGroups/exampleRG --json-auth

Replace the placeholder {app-name} with the name of your application. Replace {subscription-id} with your subscription ID.

The output is a JSON object with the role assignment credentials that provide access to your App Service app similar to below.

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

Copy this JSON object for later. You'll only need the sections with the clientId, clientSecret, subscriptionId, and tenantId values. Make sure you don't have an extra comma at the end of the last line, for example, the tenantId line in the preceding example, or else it will result in an invalid JSON file. You will get an error during the deployment saying "Login failed with Error: Content is not a valid JSON object. Double check if the 'auth-type' is correct."

Open ID Connect is an authentication method that uses short-lived tokens. Setting up OpenID Connect with GitHub Actions is more complex process that offers hardened security.

If you do not 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 will output 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 will be tied to your default subscription. Replace $subscriptionId with your subscription ID, $resourceGroupName with your resource group name, and $assigneeObjectId with the generated assignee-object-id. Learn how to manage Azure subscriptions with the Azure CLI.
```
az role assignment create --role contributor --subscription $subscriptionId --assignee-object-id  $assigneeObjectId --assignee-principal-type ServicePrincipal --scopes /subscriptions/$subscriptionId/resourceGroups/$resourceGroupName/providers/Microsoft.Web/sites/
```
Run the following command to create a new federated identity credential for your active directory application.
- Replace APPLICATION-OBJECT-ID with the objectId (generated while creating app) for your Active Directory application.
- Set a value for CREDENTIAL-NAME to reference later.
- Set the subject. The value of this 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 rest --method POST --uri 'https://graph.microsoft.com/beta/applications/<APPLICATION-OBJECT-ID>/federatedIdentityCredentials' --body '{"name":"<CREDENTIAL-NAME>","issuer":"https://token.actions.githubusercontent.com","subject":"repo:organization/repository:ref:refs/heads/main","description":"Testing","audiences":["api://AzureADTokenExchange"]}'
```
To learn how to create a Create an active directory application, service principal, and federated credentials in Azure portal, see Connect GitHub and Azure.

Configure the GitHub secrets

Service principal
Open ID Connect

Create secrets for your Azure credentials, resource group, and subscriptions. You will use these secrets in the Create workflow section.

In GitHub, navigate to your repository.
Select Settings > Secrets and variables > Actions > New repository secret.
Paste the entire JSON output from the Azure CLI command into the secret's value field. Name the secret AZURE_CREDENTIALS.
Create another secret named AZURE_RG. Add the name of your resource group to the secret's value field (exampleRG).
Create another secret named AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION. Add your subscription ID to the secret's value field (example: 90fd3f9d-4c61-432d-99ba-1273f236afa2).

You need to provide your application's Client ID, Tenant ID, and Subscription ID to the 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.
Select Settings > Secrets > New 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.

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

Add a Bicep file

Add a Bicep file to your GitHub repository. The following Bicep file creates a storage account:

@minLength(3)
@maxLength(11)
param storagePrefix string

@allowed([
  'Standard_LRS'
  'Standard_GRS'
  'Standard_RAGRS'
  'Standard_ZRS'
  'Premium_LRS'
  'Premium_ZRS'
  'Standard_GZRS'
  'Standard_RAGZRS'
])
param storageSKU string = 'Standard_LRS'

param location string = resourceGroup().location

var uniqueStorageName = '${storagePrefix}${uniqueString(resourceGroup().id)}'

resource stg 'Microsoft.Storage/storageAccounts@2021-04-01' = {
  name: uniqueStorageName
  location: location
  sku: {
    name: storageSKU
  }
  kind: 'StorageV2'
  properties: {
    supportsHttpsTrafficOnly: true
  }
}

output storageEndpoint object = stg.properties.primaryEndpoints

The Bicep file requires one parameter called storagePrefix with 3 to 11 characters.

You can put the file anywhere in the repository. The workflow sample in the next section assumes the Bicep file is named main.bicep, and it's stored at the root of your repository.

Create workflow

A workflow defines the steps to execute when triggered. It's a YAML (.yml) file in the .github/workflows/ path of your repository. The workflow file extension can be either .yml or .yaml.

To create a workflow, take the following steps:

From your GitHub repository, select Actions from the top menu.
Select New workflow.
Select set up a workflow yourself.
Rename the workflow file if you prefer a different name other than main.yml. For example: deployBicepFile.yml.

Replace the content of the yml file with the following code:

Service principal
OpenID Connect

name: Deploy Bicep file
on: [push]
jobs:
  build-and-deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:

    - name: Checkout code
      uses: actions/checkout@main

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

    - name: Deploy Bicep file
      uses: azure/arm-deploy@v1
      with:
        subscriptionId: ${{ secrets.AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION }}
        resourceGroupName: ${{ secrets.AZURE_RG }}
        template: ./main.bicep
        parameters: 'storagePrefix=mystore storageSKU=Standard_LRS'
        failOnStdErr: false

Replace mystore with your own storage account name prefix.

Note

You can specify a JSON format parameters file instead in the ARM Deploy action (example: .azuredeploy.parameters.json).

The first section of the workflow file includes:

name: The name of the workflow.
on: The name of the GitHub events that triggers the workflow. The workflow is triggered when there's a push event on the main branch.

on: [push]
name: Azure ARM
permissions:
  id-token: write
  contents: read
jobs:
  build-and-deploy:
    runs-on: ubuntu-latest
    steps:

      # Checkout code
    - uses: actions/checkout@main

      # Log into Azure
    - uses: azure/login@v1
      with:
        client-id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_CLIENT_ID }}
        tenant-id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_TENANT_ID }}
        subscription-id: ${{ secrets.AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID }}

      # Deploy Bicep file
    - name: deploy
      uses: azure/arm-deploy@v1
      with:
        subscriptionId: ${{ secrets.AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION }}
        resourceGroupName: ${{ secrets.AZURE_RG }}
        template: ./main.bicep
        parameters: 'storagePrefix=mystore storageSKU=Standard_LRS'
        failOnStdErr: false

Select Commit changes.
Select Commit directly to the main branch.
Select Commit new file (or Commit changes).

Updating either the workflow file or Bicep file triggers the workflow. The workflow starts right after you commit the changes.

Check workflow status

Select the Actions tab. You'll see a Create deployBicepFile.yml workflow listed. It takes 1-2 minutes to run the workflow.
Select the workflow to open it, and verify the Status is Success.

Clean up resources

When your resource group and repository are no longer needed, clean up the resources you deployed by deleting the resource group and your GitHub repository.

CLI
PowerShell

az group delete --name exampleRG

Remove-AzResourceGroup -Name exampleRG

Next steps

Bicep file structure and syntax

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