Azure

Microsoft Azure is an open and flexible cloud platform that enables you to quickly build, deploy and manage applications across a global network of Microsoft-managed data centres.

If you’re familiar with using git in the command line, you’ll have no trouble deploying your Harp app to Azure.

Azure Cross-Platform Command Line

First, download the Azure Cross-Platform Command Line for Node. We will use this tool to help create the Azure site from the command line.

npm install -g azure-cli

An more in-depth blog post about the tool can he found here

  1. Create or use an existing application

    If you need a new application, create a directory with an index file. You can do this with the terminal, too:

    harp init my-harp-app
cd my-harp-app

  2. Initialize your app as a Git repo

    Next, you’ll initialize your Harp app as a Git repository (if it isn’t one already.) Then, add and commit the changes:

    git init
git add .
git commit -am "hello world"

  3. Add package.json and server.js

    There are two files you’ll need to add to the root of your Harp application (not inside the public directory). The first is package.json:

    {
"name": "MyHarpApp",
"version": "1.0.0",
"description": "A Harp App on Azure",
"dependencies": {
  "harp": "0.19.0"
},
"engines": {
  "node": "4.1.x",
  "npm": "3.5.1"
}
}

    Then, use Node Package Manager to install the dependencies:

    npm install

    Next, create server.js, which should contain the following:

    require('harp').server(__dirname, { port: process.env.PORT || 5000 })

  4. Deploy your Harp app to Azure

    You’re ready to deploy to Azure. Create the Harp app as an Azure project, where my-harp-app is the name of the subdomain you want:

    azure site create --location "West US" my-harp-app --git

    This will add a new azure remote to your git repository. The azure remote is how the site will be deployed. To deploy to azure is as simple as pushing to master.

    git push azure master

  5. Set environment to production

    To get the best performance, you’ll need to set Harp’s production properly.

    azure config set NODE_ENV production

    At this point your site should be running on Azure at http://my-harp-app.azurewebsites.net, but with the subdomain you specifed instead of my-harp-app.

What’s next?

Your Harp app has been successfully deployed to Azure. Now, you’d probably like to customize it. Read the five simple rules for templating a Harp application to get started quickly.

If you’d like to use a custom domain with Azure, follow the instructions in the Microsoft Azure Documentation.