DNN Continuous Integration and Continuous Deployment with VSTS and Azure - Clean Install

DNN (DotNetNuke) is a Dot Net based Content Management System (CMS). Building DNN Modules allows you to easily extend the functionality of the DNN Website with complex apps that you can bolt on to any page in your CMS.

After using several DNN Modules I have found that building, releasing and deploying modules can be a very manual process. This is true for modules that are released outside of your organization or modules that are released internally in your website.

Installing vs Side-Loading Modules

When you build a DNN Module in release mode you generate a .zip installer file. This installer file can be bolted into your website and run necessary install scripts such as SQL scripts. After a project is installed a common approach is side-loading updates, where the administrator just copies over the latest assemblies and code files.

While side-loading your module is an easy way to patch and update your module I find a more apprioprate solution is to use the installer to properly upgrade your module. Using the installer the module will properly update it’s version number which will allow the Development and Quality Assurance teams to properly verify the modules are working as designed.

Pre-Reqs

This tutorial will walk you through installing DNN Community Edition and set up VSTS builds that create versioned installer files and deploys the website to Azure.

Pre-Req	Link
DNN 9 Platform	https://github.com/dnnsoftware/Dnn.Platform/releases
DNN 9 Templates	https://github.com/ChrisHammond/DNNTemplates
Visual Studio 2015+	https://www.visualstudio.com/
Visual Studio Team Services	https://www.visualstudio.com/team-services/
Azure Subscription	https://azure.microsoft.com/

Create Repository for DNN 9 Platform

Adding a clean install of the DNN 9 platform to source control is the first step to getting everything working. I recommend creating several branches in your git repository which reference the different enviornments. This scaffolding will be useful later on when you want to do production upgrades.

Create a new branch in your VSTS instance and call it website
After creating your repository it is recommended to create a branch for each environment (dev/staging/uat/prod/etc)
Clone your repository to your local disk
Download the DNN 9 Platform installer and install DNN 9 Platform into your cloned repository
DO NOT run the DNN installer you want the clean website saved in source control
Add the entire clean website to git and push your changes up

Create your DNN Module

If you do not have a DNN Module created we need to create it. There are several things we need to modify from the DNN MVC Template to get it to work correctly.

It is important to note that the DNN Module is modified to be built independently from the DNN Website. Your module environment currently may require the DNN Website. To properly follow this guide you will need to de-couple the Website and the Module.

Go to your VSTS Instance and create a new Repository within the same project as we did earlier for your DNN Module
Clone your repository
Create a bin directory at the root and copy over the assemblies from the bin directory of the DNN Website. Add all of these changes to source control
Goto https://github.com/ChrisHammond/DNNTemplates and install the latest DNN Visual Studio Template for your version of Visual Studio
Open Visual Studio
Create New Project
Search for the DNN MVC Template and create your new DNN MVC Module
Create your new project in your new repository.
Unload your .csproj if necessary and edit it. Update all the references where ..\..\..\bin\assembly.dll to match the apprioprate path. In our example we modified everything to be ..\..\bin\assembly.dll. When you are done doing this reload your .csproj if necessary.
Open up your MSBuild.Community.Tasks.Targets which is located in the BuildScripts folder and modify your relative MSBuildDnnBinPath to match your relative path from step 9.
Right click on your .csproj and navigate to your project properties->Build. Select the Debug and Release configurations and verify the output path matches your relative path from step 8.
If you do not do this for both configurations you will run into issues on the CI build
Verify that Debug build completes successfully
Verify that Release build completes successfully and generates the source and install .zipfiles in the install folder
Push your changes up to your repository we are ready to start configuring the builds.

Configure CI Build

All of our repositories are now created and we are ready to start configuring our Continuous Integration (CI) Build. The CI build will be triggered with each commit and automatically update the version number in the .dnn manifest file. After configuring your CI Build you will be able to build your DNN Module idenpendently of everything else and produce the module installer as a build artifact. This module installer can then be ran on any DNN Website and install your module easily.

Let’s get started

Log into your VSTS instance and navigate to builds
Click create a new build and select the empty template
Add the following tasks (see detailed info for each task below)
- NuGet Restore
- Set DNN Version Number
- Build Solution
- Test Assemblies
- Copy Files
- Publish Artifacts

NuGet

Add the NuGet restore task
You shouldn’t have to do anything, but verify your settings

Set DNN Version Number

Goto the Visual Studio Team Services Marketplace
Search for dnn module set version or navigate to the DNN Module Set Version
Install the VSTS Extension to your project
Add the Set DNN Version Number task to the build
All the fields should remain the default values

Build Solution

Add the Build Solution Task

Test Assemblies

Add the Test Assemblies Task

Copy Files

Add the Copy Files Task
Modify the regex in Contents to be **\install\*install.zip which will prune all files except the installer
Update the Target Folder to be $(build.artifactstagingdirectory)
Check Clean Target Folder
Check Flatten Folders

Publish Artifacts

Add the Publish Artifacts Task
Modify Path to Publish to $(build.artifactstagingdirectory)
Modify Artifact Name to Drop

When we are all done our build template should look something like this

Configure CI Build Settings

Now that the Build Tasks are all configured correctly we can go through the remaining steps of configuring the build settings.

Version Number

Navigate to the Build Variables tab and add the following properties and set them to the approriate values you want, for our demo they are both 0

majorVersion
minorVersion

Navigate to the Build Options tab and update the property Build Number Format to be in the following format:

$(majorVersion).$(minorVersion)$(rev:.r) - $(rev:.r) will specify the latest version of the minorVersion

CI Build Trigger

Navigate to the Build Trigger tab and configure your trigger to queue a new build when a commit happens on your master branch.

Test CI Build

Your CI build should be working at this point, go ahead and give a test. Once you have a successful build verify you are getting your intaller file created as the only build artifact.

@@ Configure Resources in Azure Before we can start deploying resources you need to add some resources into your Azure Subscriptions. Please go ahead and create the following resources to mimic our enviornment in your subscription

Resource
Web App
SQL Database Server

If you would like to to create a deployment for each environment it may be useful to create this table instead

Resource	Options
Web App - Dev	N/A
Web App - Staging	N/A
Web App - UAT	N/A
Web App - Production	N/A
SQL Database Server	4 Database, 1 for each web app

Configure Release Build

All the Azure resources are configured and we are ready to configure the Release Builds which will deploy the new website and auto install the modules in our Azure Resources.

Configure Artifacts

Once you have clicked the Add New Release button you are brought to the pipeline screen, we need to start adding our artifacts which will all be merged together.

DNN Module

In the Artifacts section click the + Add button to add your artifact
Add the DNN Module CI Build Artifacts

DNN Website

In the Artifacts section click the + Add button to add your artifact
Add the DNN Website Repository

Create Enviornment

In the Environments section click the + Add button to create our new enviornment
Select new environment
You will be brought to select build template screen where you want to select an empty template
Now give your enviornment a name
Create Release Build Tasks
- Stop Azure App Service
- Copy Website Artifacts to Merged Directory
- Copy Module Artifacts to Merged Directory
- Repeat for each module * Deploy Azure App Service * Start Azure App Service * Azure Powershell CLI - Drop and Create Databases

Stop Azure App Service

Task - Azure App Service Manage

Select your Azure Subscription
Select the action Stop App Service
Select your App Service Name

Copy Website Artifacts

Task - Copy Files

Specify your source folder which you can select with the ...
Specify your target folder which we chose $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/merged

Copy Module Artifacts

Task - Copy Files

Specify your build artifacts drop location via the ...
Specify your target folder making sure to drop it into the install/module directory
- $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/merged/Install/Module

Deploy Azure App Service

Task - Azure App Service Deploy

Select your Azure Subscription
Select your Azure App Service Name
Select the folder specified from the previous copy steps
- $(System.DefaultWorkingDirectory)/merged
Under File Transforms & Variable Substitution Options check XML variable substitution
- This is needed to update the database connection string

Start Azure App Service

Task - Azure App Service Manage

Select your Azure Subscription
Specify the Action Start App Service
Select your App Service Name

Drop and Create Database

Task - Azure PowerShell

Select Azure Connection Type of Azure Resource Manager
Select Azure Subscription
Select Script type of inline script
Include the following script where you update the following parameters to match your own

Update the following parameters

Parameter	Description
———————————	—————————————————————————————————————-
ResourceGroupName	The Azure Resource where your app and database server exist
ServerName	The Database Server name
DatabaseName	The SQL Database name that is contained on the Database Server

  
# You can write your azure powershell scripts inline here.
# You can also pass predefined and custom variables to this script using arguments
Remove-AzureRMSqlDatabase -ResourceGroupName "DNNDemo" -ServerName "dnn-demo" -DatabaseName "dnn-demo-dev"
New-AzureRMSqlDatabase -ResourceGroupName "DNNDemo" -ServerName "dnn-demo" -DatabaseName "dnn-demo-dev" -RequestedServiceObjectiveName "Basic"

Completed Workflow

Configure Environment Variables

Now that the environment is all set up we need to specify the connection string variables so it can be properly transformed at build time.

Select the Variables tab
Click the + Add button to create a new variable
Specify the name of SiteSqlServer which is the database connection string
Specify the connection string in the Value column
- The connection string can be retrieved from your Azure Configuration
Select the scope which references your enviornment
- Azure Dev
- Azure Staging
- Azure Production

Configure Trigger

Configure the trigger by clicking the trigger button on the artifact you would like to trigger. The trigger icon is the lightning bolt icon. See highlighted icon in image below

Module - After selecting the Artifact trigger, just make sure it is enabled and there isn’t really anthing else you need to define for the build.
Website - After selecting the artifact trigger make sure you select your clean branch so it knows what branch code to deploy

Now click the trigger icon from the Dev Environment so we can setup the environment to queue when the CI Build completes.

Test Release Build

At this point your release build is all set and you should be able to successfully deploy your release build to your Azure Resources. Go ahead and test this to make sure it is working.

When you navigate to your website you should see the install screen. Currently this process does not include auto installs. I plan to build a VSTS Extension in the future to handle this. Currently you manually install it or kick of the web request install process

http://mywebsite.com/Install.aspx?mode=install

Other Resources

If you have followed everything here correctly when you check in changes to your DNN Module it will now trigger the following actions

Build	Output
Continuous Integartation	DNN `.zip` Module Installer
Continuous Deployment	Clean install of DNN with specified Module Installers