Provisioning a Web App

1. Start Locally

Firstly, we need to launch Locally which we can do from a terminal by running:

Once Locally has started, the Locally Dashboard will open automatically:

2. Create a Resource Group

Next we can create the Resource Group:

There's two things to note here:

1. The Azure CLI supports Automatic Configuration, meaning that it can automatically be configured to work against Locally just by prefixing commands with locally run.
2. Locally intentionally uses a different set of locations to Azure as a safety precaution, so that you can be confident you're deploying against Locally rather than regular Azure. You can also configure Locally to use the Azure locations too, but you'll want to be extra sure that you're prefixing commands with locally run when you do.

3. Create the App Service Plan and Web App

A Web App runs on an App Service Plan, which is the compute it's scheduled onto - so that comes first:

{
  "kind": "linux",
  "name": "sample-plan",
  "sku": "B1",
  "state": "Succeeded"
}

Then the Web App itself, placed on that plan and given a runtime:

{
  "defaultHostName": "samplewebapp1.furnace.locally:5663",
  "kind": "app,linux",
  "name": "samplewebapp1",
  "state": "Running"
}

That furnace.locally hostname is served by Locally's own DNS server and points at the Web App Emulator running on your machine.

4. Request the app

At this point the app exists but has no code, so requesting it reports that it isn't ready yet - the same as a freshly created App Service in Azure before its first deployment. Deploying a build is the next step:

We can list the apps and plans in the Resource Group:

We can see the Web App in the Locally Dashboard too:

5. Tidy up

Finally, we can tidy up. To remove the Resource Group and everything within it:

There's nothing billable to clean up, since everything ran on your machine, but it's still worth checking your teardown scripts work here before you run them against Azure.

Doing this with other tooling

Whilst this guide used the Azure CLI, App Service works the same way through any of the tooling that Locally supports - a Microsoft.Web/sites resource in HashiCorp Terraform or OpenTofu, Pulumi, Bicep or an ARM Template all provision against Locally in the same way, with only the location changed.

Next steps

To give the app a database, see PostgreSQL Flexible Server or MySQL Flexible Server. For event-driven code on App Service, see Function App.

Should you encounter any issues, please take a look at the troubleshooting section.