Complete end-to-end example for python echo bot on web app?

Question

Complete end-to-end example for python echo bot on web app?

Udbhav Jain 56

Hi all,

Are there any examples available for deployment of python-based echo bot code on a web app? Been facing too many issues with app startup, ports and accessing api endpoint paths on the deployed app. Have gone through countless pages on the internet and tried various things, but I keep running into different issues every time.

I can run the samples on my local machine and connect to web chat on the azure bot after setting up the authentication variables and ngrok, but running python on web app seems to be extremely convoluted due to docker and all the networking and startup config that needs to be done by the user. All the guides I see on microsoft learn are either focussed on running a python app locally, or running a dotnet/javascript bot application on a web app.

Cheers.

Rohit Mungi 49,131 Reputation points Microsoft Employee Moderator

2022-09-30T08:27:28.907+00:00

@Udbhav Jain Do you mean the setup mentioned in this page? If you are able to use the web chat option isn't the bot deployed to your app service on Azure?
An easier option is to use the botframework composer to create your bot and it only needs a publishing profile, and it handles the deployment to azure.
Udbhav Jain 56 Reputation points

2022-10-08T01:45:43.733+00:00

Hi @Rohit Mungi , thanks for replying to my thread. I did go through that guide, but it doesn't have all the azure cli commands required to set up a python bot app. For example, it doesn't mention anything about the startup command (az webapp config set --startup-file), which needs to be set to python3 app_name.py, otherwise the deployment process assumes it's a flask app and tries running it using the gunicorn command. The default port also needs to be set using the command line (az webapp config appsettings set --settings WEBSITES_PORT) to map port 8080 to a specific docker port (because only 80 and 8080 are open to public for linux server). However, despite configuring these parameters, the app fails to bind to the port and stops trying after failing to get a response after a while. While the bot framework is an excellent option, it only supports javascript and C# at the moment, which isn't what I am building my application in.
Ram Fattah 1 Reputation point

2022-10-26T06:30:04.407+00:00

Ran into similar issue here #3805. The python bot worked locally, but not start when deployed to Azure.

The issue was fixed from my end after creating the App Service and Azure Bot with the new ARM Templates in deploymentTemplates folder in root bot project and published using Kudu zip to deploy to the app service.

The documentation for publishing bots was updated not too long ago. Note for Python, Azure CLI version 2.36.0 is the requirement.
Could you please try to publish the bot from docs here:
https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/bot-service/provision-and-publish-a-bot

Let me know if you have any questions. Thanks.