Run Azure Functions Locally

Description:

Here are the steps I did to test Azure functions locally following the quickstart.

To Resolve:

1. Install the Azure Core Tools

2. Install the Azure Functions extension in VSCode

3. In Azure Functions blade in vscode, create a new project called ‘my-http-test’ inside a new folder in my workspace called ‘local’.

4. Copy the module names from requirements.txt in my other function folder to local.

5. Copy the __init__.py from my other function to local. Press F5 to run in debug. This generates an error:

   The terminal process "C:\WINDOWS\System32\WindowsPowerShell\v1.0\powershell.exe -Command .venv\Scripts\python -m pip install -r requirements.txt" terminated with exit code: 1.
   

   • The fix was to cd to the directory and then ./.venv/Scripts/activate and then pip install -r path/to/requirements.txt

6. I tried the previous steps a few times and kept running into errors. What eventually fixed it was:

   • Using azure functions extension, create a new project under a new folder
   • Then, cd to the root directory in vscode and run func host start
   • Fix all errors until you get just a screen that says http: [GET,POST] http://localhost:7071/api/http replace http with your function name.

7. From here, you should be able to use Postman to send requests to your example function, except… environmental vars! Uggh… In Azure, these are setup per function app and contain secrets used to connect to Azure Key Vault. Instead, we will use .env files:

   • In the local project folder, in your requirements.txt add python-dotenv==0.15.0
   • Then in helpers.py add from dotenv import load_dotenv followed by load_dotenv() somewhere
   • Now create your .env file with environmental vars
   • Lastly, make sure .env is in your .gitignore or you risk exposing credentials! I also delete this file every day when I’m done testing just to be safe.