Azure Container Apps

This guide shows how to deploy xlwings Server to Azure Container Apps. You can use the Azure Dashboard or the Azure CLI or a combination of the two approaches.

Prerequisites

You’ll need to build a Docker image and push it to a registry such as Docker Hub or Azure Container Registry. Ideally, you do this via a CI/CD pipeline (Azure Dashboard allows you to automatically add a GitHub actions workflow), but for a quick test, you could also run the commands manually. From the root of the repo, run the following commands, which will build the Docker image based on Dockerfile:

docker login
docker build -t yourusername/xlwings-server:main .
docker push yourusername/xlwings-server:main

Once your image is available on Docker Hub or Azure Container Registry, you can continue with either the Azure CLI or Azure Dashboard instructions.

Azure Dashboard

  1. Get an xlwings trial license key

  2. Go to https://portal.azure.com/

  3. Search for Container Apps and click on it.

  4. + Create > + Container App

    • Container app name: e.g. xlwings Server

    • Deployment source: Container image

    • Select the desired Region, Resource group, and Container Apps environment. You may have to create the Resource group and Environment first.

    • Click on Next: Container, then select the appropriate settings to find your image from the prerequisites. The following are sample settings that work with the public image of xlwings Server:

    • Image source: Docker Hub or other registries

    • Image type: Public

    • Registry login server: docker.io

    • Image and tag: xlwings/xlwings-server:0.11.1

    • Command override: /bin/sh

    • Arguments override: -c, gunicorn app.main:main_app --bind 0.0.0.0:8000 --access-logfile - --workers 4 --timeout 30 --worker-class uvicorn.workers.UvicornWorker

    • CPU and memory: 2 CPU cores, 4 Gi memory

    • Environment variables: XLWINGS_LICENSE_KEY: your-license-key

    • Click on Next: Ingress

    • Select Enabled

      • Set the appropriate values under Ingress traffic

      • Set Target port to 8000

    • Click on Next: Tags

    • Click on Next: Review + create

    • Click on Create

  5. Under Application > Scale, you can set the Min replicas and Max replicas both to 1.

  6. Go to your Application Url. You should see {"status": "ok"}.

  7. Continue with Add-in installation

Azure CLI

Prerequisites

Setup Environment Variables

Note that some of these values have to be changed, as they have to be globally unique.

export RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME="xlwings-server-rg"
export APP_NAME="xlwings-server"
export ENVIRONMENT_NAME="xlwings-server-env"
export LOCATION="westeurope"
export CONTAINER_IMAGE_NAME="xlwings/xlwings-server:0.11.1"
export REGISTRY_SERVER="docker.io"
export REGISTRY_USERNAME="your-user-name"
export REGISTRY_PASSWORD="your-password"
export XLWINGS_LICENSE_KEY="your-license-key-here"

Deployment Steps

  1. Create Resource Group if you don’t want to reuse an existing one

    az group create \
  --name $RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME \
  --location $LOCATION

  2. Create Container Apps Environment if you don’t want to reuse an existing one (you may need to specify more options if you want to expose this on an virtual network)

    az containerapp env create \
  --name $ENVIRONMENT_NAME \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME \
  --location $LOCATION

  3. Create Container App

    az containerapp create \
  --name $APP_NAME \
  --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME \
  --image $CONTAINER_IMAGE_NAME \
  --registry-server $REGISTRY_SERVER \
  --registry-username $REGISTRY_USERNAME \
  --registry-password $REGISTRY_PASSWORD \
  --environment $ENVIRONMENT_NAME \
  --env-vars XLWINGS_LICENSE_KEY=$XLWINGS_LICENSE_KEY \
  --min-replicas 1 \
  --max-replicas 1 \
  --cpu 2.0 \
  --memory 4.0Gi \
  --target-port 8000 \
  --ingress external

    Note

    This will expose the application to the public internet. If you have an Azure Virtual Network, you have to set --ingress internal.

  4. Continue with Add-in installation

View Application Logs

az containerapp logs show \
 --name $APP_NAME \
 --resource-group $RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME \
 --follow

Cleanup

If you want to get rid of everything again that you created in this CLI walkthrough, you can delete all resources like so:

az group delete --name $RESOURCE_GROUP_NAME --yes --no-wait

Add-in installation

  1. Go to <Application Url>/manifest.xml. In your browser, go to File > Save Page As (or similar) and save the XML file somewhere locally, e.g., under the name manifest-xlwings-server.xml. It’s a good idea to open the XML file in an editor and double-check that e.g., <IconUrl> contains the correct Application Url.

  2. Go to Microsoft 365 admin center

    • Click on Show all > Settings > Integrated Apps, then click on Upload custom apps.

    • As App type select Office Add-in.

    • Select Upload manifest file (.xml) from device. Click Choose File, then select the manifest-xlwings-server.xml from the previous step.

    • Click Next, then assign the desired users.

    • Click Next and accept permission requests.

    • Click Next and Finish deployment.

The users should get the add-in to show up automatically although it may take a few minutes until they show up. Alternatively, they can go to Add-ins on the ribbon’s Home tab and click on More Add-ins. They will see the add-in under the tab Admin Managed from where they can install it (there’s also a Refresh button at the top right).