Azure Friday

The website for azurefriday.com — Scott Hanselman's weekly show about Azure.

Architecture

┌─────────────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────────────┐     ┌──────────────────────┐
│  Microsoft Learn API        │     │  Azure Function              │     │  Azure Web App       │
│                             │     │  (azurefridayaggregator)     │     │  (this repo)         │
│  /api/hierarchy/shows/      │────►│                              │     │                      │
│    azure-friday/episodes    │     │  Runs every 6 hours          │     │  azurefriday.com     │
│  /api/video/public/v1/      │     │  Fetches all 500+ episodes   │     │  .NET 10 Razor Pages │
│    entries/batch            │     │  Generates JSON + RSS feeds  │     │                      │
└─────────────────────────────┘     │  Uploads to Blob Storage     │     │  Reads cached JSON   │
                                    └──────────┬───────────────────┘     │  from Blob Storage   │
                                               │                        │  via LazyCache (4hr)  │
                                    ┌──────────▼───────────────────┐     │                      │
                                    │  Azure Blob Storage          │────►│  /rss → redirect     │
                                    │  hanselstorage/output/       │     │  /rssaudio → redirect│
                                    │                              │     └──────────────────────┘
                                    │  azurefriday.json  (1.8 MB)  │
                                    │  azurefriday.rss   (1.1 MB)  │
                                    │  azurefridayaudio.rss (1.1MB)│
                                    └──────────────────────────────┘

Two Repos

Repo	Purpose	Deploys to
azure-friday (this repo)	Web frontend — Razor Pages app that displays episodes	its-azure-friday Azure Web App
azurefridayaggregator	Data pipeline — Azure Function that fetches episode data from Microsoft Learn API and generates JSON + RSS feeds	AzureFridayDocstoJSON Azure Function

Tech Stack

• .NET 10 with minimal hosting (Program.cs, no Startup.cs)
• Razor Pages for the UI
• Tailwind CSS (build-time via CLI, no CDN) with vanilla JS for episode filtering
• LazyCache for 4-hour in-memory caching of episode data
• Polly for HTTP retry + circuit breaker on the API client
• Application Insights for monitoring
• Bicep for infrastructure-as-code (in infra/)
• GitHub Actions for CI/CD (build, test, deploy on push to master)

Running Locally

Prerequisites

• .NET 10 SDK
• Node.js 20+ (for Tailwind CSS build)
• Azure CLI (for deployment only)

Quick Start

# One-time setup (installs npm deps, builds Tailwind CSS, restores .NET packages, runs tests)
.\scripts\setup.ps1

# Run the site
dotnet run --project azure-friday.core

Or manually:

cd azure-friday.core
npm install              # Install Tailwind CSS
npm run build:css        # Build CSS (wwwroot/css/tailwind.css)
cd ..
dotnet run --project azure-friday.core

CSS Development

Tailwind CSS is rebuilt automatically on every dotnet build / dotnet run via an MSBuild target (~250ms). No separate step needed.

For instant CSS updates without restarting the app, you can optionally run the watcher in a second terminal:

cd azure-friday.core
npm run watch:css        # Rebuilds tailwind.css on every file save

Note: tailwind.css is checked into git so the site works even without Node.js installed. The MSBuild target ensures fresh CSS on every build when Node.js is available.

The app reads episode data from https://hanselstorage.blob.core.windows.net/output/azurefriday.json (configured in appsettings.json).

Running Tests

dotnet test

23 integration and unit tests covering:

• Homepage, Privacy page, and 404 handling
• Episode ID redirects (/?id=12 → https://aka.ms/azfr/012)
• Videos API endpoint (/?handler=LoadVideos) with cache-control headers
• Security headers (CSP, X-Frame-Options, HSTS, etc.)
• RSS feed redirects to Blob Storage
• Domain redirect (azurewebsites.net → azurefriday.com)
• Episode model serialization
• Cache purge functionality

Deploying to Azure

Option 1: Azure Developer CLI

azd up

Option 2: GitHub Actions (automatic)

Push to master triggers the CI/CD pipeline which builds, tests, and deploys to the its-azure-friday Azure Web App.

Required Secrets

• itsazurefriday_1f35 — Azure Web App publish profile

Key Endpoints

Path	Behavior
/	Homepage — displays episodes (loaded via JS from /?handler=LoadVideos)
/?id=123	Redirects to https://aka.ms/azfr/123
/?handler=LoadVideos	Returns episode JSON (4-hour cache)
/rss	302 redirect → hanselstorage.blob.core.windows.net/output/azurefriday.rss
/rssaudio	302 redirect → hanselstorage.blob.core.windows.net/output/azurefridayaudio.rss
/?handler=PurgeCache (POST)	Clears the in-memory episode cache

Project Structure

azure-friday/
├── azure-friday.core/           # Main web application
│   ├── Program.cs               # App startup (minimal hosting)
│   ├── Pages/                   # Razor Pages (Index, Privacy, Error, 404)
│   ├── Services/                # Data access layer
│   │   ├── IAzureFridayDB.cs    # Interface
│   │   ├── AzureFridayDB.cs     # LazyCache wrapper (4-hour TTL)
│   │   └── AzureFridayClient.cs # HTTP client for blob storage JSON
│   ├── wwwroot/                 # Static assets
│   │   ├── css/input.css        # Tailwind source + custom styles (GeoCities etc.)
│   │   ├── css/tailwind.css     # Built output (checked in, rebuilt on publish)
│   │   └── js/                  # site.js (app logic), theme-init.js (dark mode)
│   ├── tailwind.config.js       # Tailwind config (azure color palette)
│   └── package.json             # npm scripts: build:css, watch:css
├── azure-friday.tests/          # xUnit integration + unit tests
├── scripts/
│   └── setup.ps1                # One-time developer setup script
├── infra/                       # Bicep infrastructure templates
├── azure.yaml                   # Azure Developer CLI config
└── .github/workflows/           # GitHub Actions CI/CD