Adding Web Job to an existing CMS Web App

2020-08-31T06:28:34.0000000Z

This article will show you how to add a WebJob to an existing CMS web app project. The WebJob will access the CMS database and print out the last 15 activity log entries.

First, add a new project to the solution which has the existing CMS web app and choose Azure WebJob template.

Once the project is created, replace the Function.cs file with the content below:

using System.Configuration;
using System.Data;
using System.Data.SqlClient;
using System.IO;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
 
namespace GetLatestActivityLogs
{
    public class Functions
    {
        public static async Task GetLatestActivityLogs(TextWriter log)
        {
            log.WriteLine($"+++ Getting the latest activity logs +++");
 
            using (var dbConnection = new SqlConnection(ConfigurationManager.ConnectionStrings["EPiServerDB"].ConnectionString))
            {
                await dbConnection.OpenAsync().ConfigureAwait(false);
                var selectCommandText = "select top 15 AL.LogData, AL.ChangeDate, AL.ChangedBy from tblActivityLog as AL order by AL.ChangeDate desc";
                using (var command = new SqlCommand(selectCommandText, dbConnection))
                {
                    using (var reader = await command.ExecuteReaderAsync(CommandBehavior.CloseConnection).ConfigureAwait(false))
                    {
                        while (reader.Read())
                        {
                            log.WriteLine($"Data :{reader["LogData"]} - Changed on: {reader["ChangeDate"]} - Changed by: {reader["ChangedBy"]}");
                        }
                    }
                }
            }
        }
    }
}

And replace the Program.cs file with this content:

using System;
using System.Threading.Tasks;
 
namespace GetLatestActivityLogs
{
    // To learn more about Microsoft Azure WebJobs SDK, please see https://go.microsoft.com/fwlink/?LinkID=320976
    class Program
    {
        // Please set the following connection strings in app.config for this WebJob to run:
        // AzureWebJobsDashboard and AzureWebJobsStorage
        static void Main()
        {
            Task.Run(async () =>
            {
                await Functions.GetLatestActivityLogs(Console.Out).ConfigureAwait(false);
            }).GetAwaiter().GetResult();
        }
    }
}

Then add database connection string to the App.config file

<add name="EPiServerDB"
         connectionString="Server=tcp:{dxp_environment_name}.database.windows.net,1433;Initial Catalog=epicms;Persist Security Info=False;User ID={db_user_id};Password={db_password};MultipleActiveResultSets=False;Encrypt=True;TrustServerCertificate=False;Connection Timeout=30;"
         providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" />

The WebJob project is now ready to add to be deloyed along with the Web App, to do that let's add the project as Azure WebJob to the WebApp

A file named webjobs-list.json added to the web app project

{
  "$schema": "http://schemastore.org/schemas/json/webjobs-list.json",
  "WebJobs": [
    {
      "filePath": "../GetLatestActivityLogs/GetLatestActivityLogs.csproj"
    }
  ]
}

In which the filePath points to path of the WebJob project. And a file added to the project itself, webjob-publish-settings.json, in which defines WebJob name and run mode.

{
  "$schema": "http://schemastore.org/schemas/json/webjob-publish-settings.json",
  "webJobName": "GetLatestActivityLogs",
  "runMode": "Continuous"
}

The solution is now ready publish to DXP environment. Select the web app project and choose publish, and then choose [Azure App Service (Windows)] to deploy the site to:

Uncheck the option [Exclude files from the App_Data folder], and then publish the web app as usual.

Once publish has finished, go to App Service Editor tool in Azure Portal. You can see the Web Jobs and its dependencies are in [app_data] folder.

Run the WebJob and you can check Logs to see the result, it should look like this:

Blog posts by Bien Le

Adding Web Job to an existing CMS Web App