LAMP/managedApplication/PublishMoodleManagedApplication.md

Publish a Moodle Based Managed Appliction to Service Catalog

In this document we will look at how to publish a Moodle based Managed Application into your Service Catalog so that you can allow your customers to deploy the application into their subscriptions. If you are not sure why you would do this you might want to read our Moodle Based Managed Application Introduction first.

Prerequisites

In the following sections we demonstrate how to use the Azure CLI to work with a Moodle based Managed Application. For convenience these commands use a variety of environment variables that should be configured first.

Defining the Resources (mainTemplate.json)

The mainTemplate.json file defines the Azure resources that are provisioned as part of the managed application. We've already done the majority of the work here for you (see azuredeploy.json in the root of this repository). The mainTemplate.json file is where you customize the configuration and, optionally, add additional resources.

For the purposes of our demo we will use the ARM template from the root of our project as the main tamplate.

This file is a regular Azure Resource Manager template.

User Interface Definition (createUIDefinition.json)

The createUIDefinition.json file describes the user interface needed to configure the managed application. It defines how the user provides input for each of the parameters (specified in mainTemplate.json).

An initial createUIDefinition.json file is provided in managedApplication/creatueUIDefinition.json. This files is sufficient to get you started building your own Moodle based Managed Applications.

See Create UI Definition documentation for more information.

Create an Azure Active Directory User Group or Application

You will need to create one ore more user group or appliction in Azure Active Directory to allow you to manage the applications resources on behalf of your customer. These groups or application can be given any built-in Role-Based Access Control (RBAC) role, such as 'Owner' or 'Contributor'. By creating more than one such group or application you can configure access to your customers resources based on the specific needs of each role in your organization.

Azure has full documentation on creating a group in Azure Active Directory. The commands below will create a single 'owner' role for use in the examples below.

If the Group already exists we don't want to create a new one, so we will try to get the Group ID first:

MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_AD_ID=$(az ad group list --filter="displayName eq '$MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_OWNER_GROUP_NAME'" --query [0].objectId --output tsv)

At this point MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_AD_ID will either be empty or it will have the ID of an existing group. If it is empty we need to create the group and grab its ID:

if [ -z "$MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_AD_ID" ]; then az ad group create --display-name $MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_OWNER_GROUP_NAME --mail-nickname=$MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_OWNER_NICKNAME; fi

Let's ensure that we have the object ID even if we created a new one.

MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_AD_ID=$(az ad group list --filter="displayName eq '$MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_OWNER_GROUP_NAME'" --query [0].objectId --output tsv)

You will also need the Role ID for your chosen role, here we will use the built-in 'Owner' role:

MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_ROLE_ID=$(az role definition list --name Owner --query [].name --output tsv)

The Azure documentation has more information on how to work with Azure Active Directory.

Create a Resource Group for the Managed Application Service Catalog Entry

az group create --name $MOODLE_SERVICE_CATALOG_RG_NAME --location $MOODLE_SERVICE_CATALOG_LOCATION

Publish to your Service Catalog using Azure CLI

You can publish a Managed Application definition into your Service Catalog using the Azure CLI. For convenience we'll set a few environment variables to make it easier to work with the application. We'll need to construct the authorization configuration from the app and role IDs retrieved earlier.

MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_AUTHORIZATIONS=$MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_AD_ID:$MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_ROLE_ID

The following command will add your managed application definition to the Service Catalog.

az managedapp definition create --name $MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_NAME --location $MOODLE_SERVICE_CATALOG_LOCATION --resource-group $MOODLE_SERVICE_CATALOG_RG_NAME --lock-level $MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_LOCK_LEVEL --display-name $MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_DISPLAY_NAME --description "$MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_DESCRIPTION" --authorizations="$MOODLE_MANAGED_APP_AUTHORIZATIONS" --main-template=@../azuredeploy.json --create-ui-definition=@createUIDefinition.json

Results:

{
  "artifacts": [
    {
        "name": "ApplicationResourceTemplate",
        "type": "Template",
        "uri": "https://prdsapplianceprodsn01.blob.core.windows.net/applicationdefinitions/84205_325E7C3499FB4190AA871DF746C67705_8D748DA35A5166F6BF319C41398E89D9953014D8/applicationResourceTemplate.json?sv=2014-02-14&sr=b&sig=PyYyl6dzf0vVyrde2yJZ73h6h9fqbXHwMJuXf0lGFr8%3D&se=2118-03-15T21:33:33Z&sp=r"
    },
    {
        "name": "CreateUiDefinition",
        "type": "Custom",
        "uri": "https://management.azure.com/subscriptions/325e7c34-99fb-4190-aa87-1df746c67705/resourceGroups/MoodleManagedAppServiceCatalogRG/providers/Microsoft.Solutions/applicationDefinitions/MoodleManagedApp/applicationArtifacts/CreateUiDefinition?api-version=2017-09-01"
    }
  ],
  "authorizations": [
    {
      "principalId": "fdc3f6fb-cc24-4182-9943-b63e0ed67285",
      "roleDefinitionId": "8e3af657-a8ff-443c-a75c-2fe8c4bcb635"
    }
  ],
  "createUiDefinition": null,
  "description": "Moodle on Azure as a Managed Application",
  "displayName": "Moodle",
  "id": "/subscriptions/325e7c34-99fb-4190-aa87-1df746c67705/resourceGroups/MoodleManagedAppServiceCatalogRG/providers/Microsoft.Solutions/applicationDefinitions/MoodleManagedApp",
  "identity": null,
  "isEnabled": "True",
  "location": "southcentralus",
  "lockLevel": "ReadOnly",
  "mainTemplate": null,
  "managedBy": null,
  "name": "MoodleManagedApp",
  "packageFileUri": null,
  "resourceGroup": "MoodleManagedAppServiceCatalogRG",
  "sku": null,
  "tags": null,
  "type": "Microsoft.Solutions/applicationDefinitions"
}

[OPTIONAL] Package the files

The mainTemplate.json and createUIDefinition.json files can be packaged together in a zip file. Both files should be at the root level of the zip. Once created the package needs to be uploaded to a location accessible to Azure. We've published the samples to GitHub so you can experiment with minimal effort.

To use a package file remove the --create-ui-definition and --main-tamplate arguments from the above CLI command instead provide a URI for the package using --package-file-uri argument.

Next Steps

Now that you have published a Moodle based Managed Application on Azure you can:

1. Deploy Moodle into Customer Subscription