Quickstart: Create a Java app on Azure App Service

Article
03/12/2024

In this quickstart, you'll use the Maven Plugin for Azure App Service Web Apps to deploy a Java web application to a Linux Tomcat server in Azure App Service. App Service provides a highly scalable, self-patching web app hosting service. Use the tabs to switch between Tomcat, JBoss, or embedded server (Java SE) instructions.

Screenshot of Maven Hello World web app running in Azure App Service.

If Maven isn't your preferred development tool, check out our similar tutorials for Java developers:

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a trial account before you begin.

1 - Use Azure cli

2 - Create a Java app

Execute the following Maven command in the cli prompt to create a new app named helloworld:

mvn archetype:generate "-DgroupId=example.demo" "-DartifactId=helloworld" "-DarchetypeArtifactId=maven-archetype-webapp" "-DarchetypeVersion=1.4" "-Dversion=1.0-SNAPSHOT"

Then change your working directory to the project folder:

cd helloworld

3 - Configure the Maven plugin

The deployment process to Azure App Service uses your Azure credentials from the Azure CLI automatically. If the Azure CLI isn't installed locally, then the Maven plugin authenticates with OAuth or device sign-in. For more information, see authentication with Maven plugins.

Run the Maven command shown next to configure the deployment. This command helps you to set up the App Service operating system, Java version, and Tomcat version.

mvn com.microsoft.azure:azure-webapp-maven-plugin:2.12.0:config

For Create new run configuration, type Y, then Enter.
For Define value for OS, type 1 for Windows, or 2 for Linux, then Enter.
For Define value for javaVersion, type 3 for Java 17, then Enter.
For Define value for webContainer, type 1 for Tomcat 10.0, then Enter.
For Define value for pricingTier, type 9 for P1v2, then Enter.

For Confirm, type Y, then Enter.

Please confirm webapp properties
AppName : helloworld-1690440759246
ResourceGroup : helloworld-1690440759246-rg
Region : chinanorth2
PricingTier : P1v2
OS : Linux
Java Version: Java 17
Web server stack: Tomcat 10.0
Deploy to slot : false
Confirm (Y/N) [Y]: 
[INFO] Saving configuration to pom.
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time:  13.069 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2023-07-27T06:52:48Z
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

After you've confirmed your choices, the plugin adds the above plugin element and requisite settings to your project's pom.xml file that configure your web app to run in Azure App Service.

The relevant portion of the pom.xml file should look similar to the following example.

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>com.microsoft.azure</groupId>
            <artifactId>>azure-webapp-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>x.xx.x</version>
            <configuration>
                <schemaVersion>v2</schemaVersion>
                <resourceGroup>your-resourcegroup-name</resourceGroup>
                <appName>your-app-name</appName>
            ...
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

You can modify the configurations for App Service directly in your pom.xml. Some common configurations are listed in the following table:

Property	Required	Description	Version
`<schemaVersion>`	false	Specify the version of the configuration schema. Supported values are: `v1`, `v2`.	1.5.2
`<subscriptionId>`	false	Specify the subscription ID.	0.1.0+
`<resourceGroup>`	true	Azure Resource Group for your Web App.	0.1.0+
`<appName>`	true	The name of your Web App.	0.1.0+
`<region>`	false	Specifies the region to host your Web App; the default value is chinanorth2. All valid regions at Supported Regions section.	0.1.0+
`<pricingTier>`	false	The pricing tier for your Web App. The default value is P1v2 for production workload, while B2 is the recommended minimum for Java dev/test. For more information, see App Service Pricing	0.1.0+
`<runtime>`	false	The runtime environment configuration. For more information, see Configuration Details.	0.1.0+
`<deployment>`	false	The deployment configuration. For more information, see Configuration Details.	0.1.0+

For the complete list of configurations, see the plugin reference documentation. All the Azure Maven Plugins share a common set of configurations. For these configurations see Common Configurations. For configurations specific to App Service, see Azure Web App: Configuration Details.

Be careful about the values of <appName> and <resourceGroup> (helloworld-1690440759246 and helloworld-1690440759246-rg accordingly in the demo). They're used later.

4 - Deploy the app

With all the configuration ready in your pom.xml file, you can deploy your Java app to Azure with one single command.

mvn package azure-webapp:deploy

Once deployment is completed, your application is ready at http://<appName>.chinacloudsites.cn/ (http://helloworld-1690440759246.chinacloudsites.cn in the demo). Open the url with your local web browser, you should see

Screenshot of Maven Hello World web app running in Azure App Service.

Congratulations! You've deployed your first Java app to App Service.

5 - Clean up resources

In the preceding steps, you created Azure resources in a resource group. If you don't need the resources in the future, delete the resource group from portal, or by running the following command in the Cli:

az group delete --name <your resource group name; for example: helloworld-1690440759246-rg> --yes

This command may take a minute to run.

In this quickstart, you use the Maven Plugin for Azure App Service Web Apps to deploy a Java web application with an embedded server to Azure App Service. App Service provides a highly scalable, self-patching web app hosting service. Use the tabs to switch between Tomcat, or embedded server (Java SE) instructions.

The quickstart deploys either a Spring Boot app, embedded Tomcat, or Quarkus app using the azure-webapp-maven-plugin plugin.

Note

App Service can host Spring apps. For Spring apps that require all the Spring services, try Azure Spring Apps instead.

Screenshot of Spring Boot Hello World web app running in Azure App Service in introduction.

If Maven isn't your preferred development tool, check out our similar tutorials for Java developers:

If you don't have an Azure subscription, create a trial account before you begin.

1 - Use Azure local Shell

2 - Get the sample app

Download and extract the default Spring Boot web application template. This repository is cloned for you when you run the Spring CLI command spring boot new my-webapp.
```
git clone https://github.com/rd-1-2022/rest-service my-webapp
```
Change your working directory to the project folder:
```
cd my-webapp
```

Download and extract the embeddedTomcatExample repository, or clone it locally by running git clone:
```
git clone https://github.com/Azure-Samples/java-docs-embedded-tomcat
```
Change your working directory to the project folder:
```
cd java-docs-embedded-tomcat
```
The application is run using the standard Tomcat class (see Main.java in the sample).

Generate a new Quarkus app named quarkus-hello-azure with the following Maven command:

mvn io.quarkus.platform:quarkus-maven-plugin:3.2.2.Final:create \
    -DprojectGroupId=org.acme \
    -DprojectArtifactId=quarkus-hello-azure  \
    -Dextensions='resteasy-reactive'

Change your working directory to the project folder:
```
cd quarkus-hello-azure
```

3 - Configure the Maven plugin

Run the Maven command shown next to configure the deployment. This command helps you to set up the App Service operating system, Java version, and Tomcat version.

mvn com.microsoft.azure:azure-webapp-maven-plugin:2.13.0:config

For Create new run configuration, type Y, then Enter.
For Define value for OS, type 2 for Linux, then Enter.
For Define value for javaVersion, type 1 for Java 17, then Enter.
For Define value for pricingTier, type 9 for P1v2, then Enter.

For Confirm, type Y, then Enter.

Please confirm webapp properties
AppName : <generated-app-name>
ResourceGroup : <generated-app-name>-rg
Region : chinanorth2
PricingTier : P1v2
OS : Linux
Java Version: Java 17
Web server stack: Java SE
Deploy to slot : false
Confirm (Y/N) [Y]: y
[INFO] Saving configuration to pom.
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time:  8.139 s
[INFO] Finished at: 2023-07-26T12:42:48Z
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

After you confirm your choices, the plugin adds the above plugin element and requisite settings to your project's pom.xml file that configure your web app to run in Azure App Service.

The relevant portion of the pom.xml file should look similar to the following example.

<build>
    <plugins>
        <plugin>
            <groupId>com.microsoft.azure</groupId>
            <artifactId>>azure-webapp-maven-plugin</artifactId>
            <version>x.xx.x</version>
            <configuration>
                <schemaVersion>v2</schemaVersion>
                <resourceGroup>your-resourcegroup-name</resourceGroup>
                <appName>your-app-name</appName>
            ...
            </configuration>
        </plugin>
    </plugins>
</build>

You can modify the configurations for App Service directly in your pom.xml. Some common configurations are listed in the following table:

Property	Required	Description	Version
`<schemaVersion>`	false	Specify the version of the configuration schema. Supported values are: `v1`, `v2`.	1.5.2
`<subscriptionId>`	false	Specify the subscription ID.	0.1.0+
`<resourceGroup>`	true	Azure Resource Group for your Web App.	0.1.0+
`<appName>`	true	The name of your Web App.	0.1.0+
`<region>`	false	Specifies the region to host your Web App; the default value is chinanorth2. All valid regions at Supported Regions section.	0.1.0+
`<pricingTier>`	false	The pricing tier for your Web App. The default value is P1v2 for production workload, while B2 is the recommended minimum for Java dev/test. For more information, see App Service Pricing	0.1.0+
`<runtime>`	false	The runtime environment configuration. For more information, see Configuration Details.	0.1.0+
`<deployment>`	false	The deployment configuration. For more information, see Configuration Details.	0.1.0+

Be careful about the values of <appName> and <resourceGroup>. They're used later.

4 - Deploy the app

With all the configuration ready in your pom.xml file, you can deploy your Java app to Azure with one single command.

Build the JAR file using the following command:
```
mvn clean package
```
```
mvn clean package
```
To make the application it deployable using azure-webapp-maven-plugin, and running on Azure App Service, the sample configures the package goal as follows:
- Build a single uber JAR file, which contains everything the application needs to run.
- Create an executable JAR by specifying the Tomcat class as the start-up class.
- Replace the original artifact with the uber JAR to ensure that the deploy step deploys the right file.
Tip

Quarkus and Spring Boot both produce two JAR files with mvn clean package, but azure-webapp-maven-plugin picks the right JAR file to deploy automatically.
```
mvn clean package -Dquarkus.package.type=uber-jar -D%prod.quarkus.http.port=80 
```
This command adds two Quarkus properties:
- quarkus.package.type=uber-jar tells Maven to generate an Uber-Jar, which includes all dependencies in the JAR file.
- %prod.quarkus.http.port=80 tells Quarkus to use port 80 for the prod environment at runtime, which is the default port that the Linux Java container uses. If you want, you can change the port number of the Java container with the WEBSITES_PORT app setting.
You can configure these properties by using other means, but they're added to mvn package command here for simplicity.

Deploy to Azure by using the following command:

mvn azure-webapp:deploy

If the deployment succeeds, you see the following output:

[INFO] Successfully deployed the artifact to https://<app-name>.chinacloudsites.cn
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] BUILD SUCCESS
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------
[INFO] Total time:  02:20 min
[INFO] Finished at: 2023-07-26T12:47:50Z
[INFO] ------------------------------------------------------------------------

Once deployment is completed, your application is ready at http://<appName>.chinacloudsites.cn/. Open the URL http://<appName>.chinacloudsites.cn/greeting with your local web browser (note the /greeting path), and you should see:

Screenshot of Spring Boot Hello World web app running in Azure App Service.

Congratulations! You deployed your first Java app to App Service.

5 - Clean up resources

az group delete --name <your resource group name; for example: quarkus-hello-azure-1690375364238-rg> --yes

This command might take a minute to run.

Next steps

Connect to Azure Database for PostgreSQL with Java

Set up CI/CD

Pricing Information

Aggregate Logs and Metrics

Scale up

Azure for Java Developers Resources

Configure your Java app

Secure with custom domain and certificate

Quickstart: Create a Java app on Azure App Service

1 - Use Azure cli

2 - Create a Java app

3 - Configure the Maven plugin

4 - Deploy the app

5 - Clean up resources

1 - Use Azure local Shell

2 - Get the sample app

3 - Configure the Maven plugin

4 - Deploy the app

5 - Clean up resources

Next steps

Additional resources