iaingblack / azbuilder

Web based az cli command line builder

AZ Builder

Webapp for creating resources with az cli. It will be a simple pick a resource and fill in the options. It can take quite a long time to figure out the required info for every resource when you want to quickly architect something. AZ CLI is a great way to do prototyping without needing to dive into powershell cmdlets (perhaps a nice alternative), ARM templates (ugh!), Ansible (okay for simple things), Terraform (high initial effort), etc...

Example

This seems like a great example of what could be done. Python and Flask Backend, with HTMX to make adding 'resources' via HTML blocks (buttons, dropdowns, checkbox etc) and then I can generate the az cli command (somehow) from it. HTMX means I dont need React etc... I had no idea client side generation of a dynamic web 'GUI' like this without state could be so difficult (though I could be missing something). Actually, it isnt as bad as I thought, you can do anything you like, but it forces a page reload. So I can do whatever I need without HTMX, but it isnt as 'nice'. I can still maintain state through the python variables being passed around.

https://codecapsules.io/tutorial/building-a-full-stack-application-with-flask-and-htmx/

Also good https://apostrophecms.com/blog/htmx-examples-and-how-to-use-it

Also maybe look at flask-wtf for the forms https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GbJPqu0ff9A

Python Setup

Just for my reference. How to setup a virtual env and test a build of the installer on windows.

Download and unzip repo

Mac/Ubuntu 22.04

sudo apt install python3 python3-pip python3-venv python3-tk -y
python3 -m venv ./venv/
sudo chmod +x ./venv/bin/activate
. ./venv/bin/activate
python3 -m pip install --upgrade pip
pip3 install -r requirements.txt
python3 azgui.py

Mac

brew install python-tk

Requirements

pip3 freeze > requirements.txt

Django Create Project (one time)

django-admin startproject azbuilder .

Start Server

python3 manage.py runserver 

Pages Required

What do I need to be able to do?

• Set the location and RG name
• Add a resource
• Delete a Resource
• Edit a Resource (maybe too much)
• Generate a command line script from the choices

It may be required that I make an object or a page per resource. That would suck. Ideally I want a way to make a generic object and have the values it can accept (required, optional, checkboxes for things), then generate a table of input fields based on that.

Static Data

Locations

az account list-locations -o json > ./static/locations.json

https://stackoverflow.com/questions/2733813/iterating-through-a-json-object

with open('./static/locations.json') as locations_file:
  file_contents = locations_file.read()