The Farmer .NET Template

Farmer comes with a .NET template that makes getting started easy.

Creating a basic Farmer app

The easiest way to create a Farmer app is to use the Farmer .NET Template.

dotnet new -i Farmer.Template
dotnet new Farmer

You only have to install the template once on your machine!

This creates a new dotnet application solution and project that looks by default as follows:

open Farmer
open Farmer.Builders

let deployment = arm {
    location Location.NorthEurope
}

printf "Generating ARM template..."
deployment |> Writer.quickWrite "output"
printfn "all done! Template written to output.json"

From here, you can add resources in the normal manner.

Basic configuration options

You can configure the template using the following optional arguments.

ARM Template filename

The name of the ARM template JSON file e.g. --armTemplate myTemplate

Location

The location to create resources in e.g. --location WestUS

Deploy Configuration

You can also configure the Farmer template to deploy to Azure out of the box using the --ci option. This has two modes of operation:

Azure DevOps deployment

This comes with a ready-made devops YAML file designed for simple CI/CD, using Farmer to generate ARM templates and Azdo to deploy using its own ARM Template deployment process. You should supply the following arguments:

• –ci: Tells the template to create a Farmer app for use with Azure Devops.
• –azureSubscription: Set the full name of the Azure Subscription that has been already configured in Azdo that has permission to deploy templates to Azure.
• –resourceGroup: Set the name of the resource group that you wish to deploy to.

Direct deployment

If you prefer a deployment process that is not coupled to Azure Devops, you can create a service principal in Azure and use the generated credentials in Farmer. Farmer will use its own wrapper around the Azure REST API to deploy to Azure, reporting progress to the console.