Tutorial: Create a Radius Application

Learn how to define, deploy, and manage a new Radius Application

This tutorial will teach you the basics of creating a new Radius Application. You will learn how to:

  1. Define and deploy a Radius Environment and Application
  2. Add a container to your application and customize that container
  3. Add a Mongo database to your application and connect it to your container
  4. Add a second container and connect it to your first container
  5. Securely expose your application to the internet through a gateway

By the end of the tutorial, you will have created and deployed a new Radius Application.

Prerequisites

Step 1: Initialize a Radius Environment and Application

Radius Environments are where applications are deployed. Environments determine how an application runs on a particular platform (like AWS or Azure).

  1. Begin by creating a new directory for your application:

    mkdir myapp
    cd myapp
    
  2. Initialize a new Radius Environment with rad init:

    rad init
    

    When asked if you want to create a new application select “Yes”. This will create a new file named app.bicep in your directory where your application will be defined. It will also create a bicepconfig.json file that will contain the necessary setup to use Radius types with Bicep.

Step 2: Inspect your Application

Radius Applications are where all your app’s resources and relationships come together. Let’s take a look at this Radius Application to learn more about it.

  1. View the full Application definition by running rad app show -o json:

    rad app show myapp -o json
    

    You will see the full App definition in its raw JSON format:

    {
      "id": "/planes/radius/local/resourcegroups/default/providers/Applications.Core/applications/myapp",
      "location": "global",
      "name": "myapp",
      "properties": {
        "environment": "/planes/radius/local/resourceGroups/default/providers/Applications.Core/environments/default",
        "provisioningState": "Succeeded",
        "status": {
          "compute": {
            "kind": "kubernetes",
            "namespace": "default-myapp"
          }
        }
      },
      "systemData": {},
      "tags": {},
      "type": "Applications.Core/applications"
    }
    

    There are a few important things to note about the application definition:

    • id is the fully-qualified UCP resource ID of the application. This value is used to uniquely identify the application in the Radius system.
    • location is the where your Application resides. For now, all applications are deployed to the global location, which corresponds to the cluster where Radius is running.
    • environment specifies the Radius Environment which the Applications “binds” to at deployment. This is what determines where containers should run (Kubernetes) and which namespace to deploy into (prefixed with “default”). In this case, the application will be deployed into the default Environment that was created by rad init.
    • compute specifies the hosting platform where running services in the Application will run. In this case, the services will be deployed into the default-myapp Kubernetes namespace within the same cluster where Radius is installed.
  2. Let’s take a look inside the Application to see what’s deployed. Run rad app graph to print the Application’s resources and relationships:

    rad app graph
    

    You’ll see that nothing has been deployed yet and the app is empty:

    Displaying application: myapp
    
    (empty)
    

    Let’s deploy some resources to start building out the application.

Step 3: Inspect and deploy app.bicep

app.bicep will define all the resources (containers, gateways, cloud services, etc) that make up your application, including how those resources are connected to each other. Given this explicit and comprehensive application definition, Radius Application files make it simple to consistently deploy and manage your application.

  1. Open app.bicep and see the scaffolded application created by rad init:

    // Import the set of Radius resources (Applications.*) into Bicep
    extension radius
    
    @description('The ID of your Radius Application. Set automatically by the rad CLI.')
    param application string
    
    resource demo 'Applications.Core/containers@2023-10-01-preview' = {
      name: 'demo'
      properties: {
        application: application
        container: {
          image: 'ghcr.io/radius-project/samples/demo:latest'
          ports: {
            web: {
              containerPort: 3000
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
    
  2. Deploy app.bicep with rad deploy:

    rad deploy app.bicep
    

    You should see your container deployed:

    Building .\app.bicep...
    Deploying template '.\app.bicep' for application 'myapp' and environment 'default' from workspace 'default'...
    
    Deployment In Progress...
    
    Deployment Complete
    
    Resources:
        demo            Applications.Core/containers
    
  3. Run rad app graph again to see the container you just deployed:

    rad app graph
    

    You should see the container you just deployed, along with the underlying Kubernetes resources that were created to run it:

    Displaying application: myapp
    
    Name: demo (Applications.Core/containers)
    Connections: (none)
    Resources:
     demo (kubernetes: apps/Deployment)
     demo (kubernetes: core/Service)
     demo (kubernetes: core/ServiceAccount)
     demo (kubernetes: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/Role)
     demo (kubernetes: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/RoleBinding)
    

Step 4: Run your application

When working with Radius Applications you will probably want to access container endpoints and view logs. rad run makes it simple to deploy your application and automatically set up port-forwarding and log streaming:

rad run app.bicep

You should see the container deployed and the port-forward and log stream started:

Building .\app.bicep...
Deploying template '.\app.bicep' for application 'myapp' and environment 'default' from workspace 'default'...

Deployment In Progress...

..                   demo            Applications.Core/containers

Deployment Complete

Resources:
    demo            Applications.Core/containers

Starting log stream...

demo-bb9df8798-b68rc › demo
demo-bb9df8798-b68rc demo Using in-memory store: no connection string found
demo-bb9df8798-b68rc demo Server is running at http://localhost:3000
demo-bb9df8798-b68rc demo [port-forward] connected from localhost:3000 -> ::3000

Open http://localhost:3000 to view the Radius demo container:

When you’re done press CTRL + c to terminate the port-forward and log stream.

Step 5: Add a database and a connection

In addition to containers, you can add dependencies like Redis caches, Dapr State Stores, Mongo databases, and more.

  1. Add a Mongo database and an environment parameter to your app.bicep file:

    @description('The ID of your Radius Environment. Set automatically by the rad CLI.')
    param environment string
    
    resource mongodb 'Applications.Datastores/mongoDatabases@2023-10-01-preview' = {
      name: 'mongodb'
      properties: {
        environment: environment
        application: application
      }
    }
    
  2. To learn about the underlying Recipe that will deploy and manage the Mongo infrastructure run rad recipe show:

    rad recipe show default --resource-type Applications.Datastores/mongoDatabases
    

    You’ll see details on the Recipe, including available parameters and defaults:

    NAME      TYPE                                    TEMPLATE KIND  TEMPLATE VERSION  TEMPLATE
    default   Applications.Datastores/mongoDatabases  bicep                            ghcr.io/radius-project/recipes/local-dev/mongodatabases:latest
    
    PARAMETER NAME  TYPE          DEFAULT VALUE   MIN       MAX
    username        string        admin           -         -
    password        secureString  Password1234==  -         -
    database        string                        -         -
    

    If you want to learn more about the Recipe template it’s in the Recipes repo.

  3. Add a connection from your container to the Mongo database, which indicates to Radius that your container needs to communicate with the Mongo database:

    resource demo 'Applications.Core/containers@2023-10-01-preview' = {
      name: 'demo'
      properties: {
        application: application
        container: {
          image: 'ghcr.io/radius-project/samples/tutorial/demo:edge'
          env: {
            FOO: {
              value: 'bar'
            }
          }
          ports: {
            web: {
              containerPort: 3000
            }
          }
        }
        connections: {
          mongodb: {
            source: mongodb.id
          }
        }
      }
    }
    
  4. Re-run your app with rad run to deploy the Mongo database and container and start the port-forward and log stream:

    rad run app.bicep
    
    Building .\app.bicep...
    Deploying template '.\app.bicep' for application 'myapp' and environment 'default' from workspace 'default'...
    
    Deployment In Progress...
    
    Deployment Complete
    
    Resources:
        myapp           Applications.Core/applications
        demo            Applications.Core/containers
        mongodb         Applications.Datastores/mongoDatabases
    
    Starting log stream...
    
  5. Open localhost:3000 to interact with the demo container. You should see the container’s connections and metadata, this time with a connection to the Mongo database and new environment variables set:

  6. Press CTRL+C to terminate the port-forward and log stream.

  7. Run rad app graph again to see the new dependency:

    rad app graph
    

    You should see the container and Mongo database you just deployed, along with the underlying Kubernetes resources that were created to run them:

    Displaying application: myapp
    
    Name: demo (Applications.Core/containers)
    Connections:
      demo -> mongodb (Applications.Datastores/mongoDatabases)
    Resources:
      demo (kubernetes: apps/Deployment)
      demo (kubernetes: core/Secret)
      demo (kubernetes: core/Service)
      demo (kubernetes: core/ServiceAccount)
      demo (kubernetes: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/Role)
      demo (kubernetes: rbac.authorization.k8s.io/RoleBinding)
    
    Name: mongodb (Applications.Datastores/mongoDatabases)
    Connections:
      demo (Applications.Core/containers) -> mongodb
    Resources:
      mongo-bzmp2btdgzez6 (kubernetes: apps/Deployment)
      mongo-bzmp2btdgzez6 (kubernetes: core/Service)
    

Step 6: Add a backend container

In addition to dependencies, you can add more containers to make your application code more modular. Containers can be configured to interact with each other as needed.

  1. Add a second container named backend to your app.bicep file, specifying the image and port to open to other containers:

    resource backend 'Applications.Core/containers@2023-10-01-preview' = {
      name: 'backend'
      properties: {
        application: application
        container: {
          image: 'nginx:latest'
          ports: {
            api: {
              containerPort: 80
            }
          }
        }
      }
    }
    
  2. Add a new connection from your demo container to the backend container:

    resource demo 'Applications.Core/containers@2023-10-01-preview' = {
      name: 'demo'
      properties: {
        application: application
        container: {
          image: 'ghcr.io/radius-project/samples/tutorial/demo:edge'
          env: {
            FOO: {
              value: 'bar'
            }
          }
          ports: {
            web: {
              containerPort: 3000
            }
          }
        }
        connections: {
          mongodb: {
            source: mongodb.id
          }
          backend: {
            source: 'http://backend:80'
          }
        }
      }
    }
    
  3. Re-run your app with rad run:

    rad run app.bicep
    
    Building .\app.bicep...
    Deploying template '.\app.bicep' for application 'myapp' and environment 'default' from workspace 'default'...
    
    Deployment In Progress...
    
    Deployment Complete
    
    Resources:
        demo            Applications.Core/containers
        backend         Applications.Core/containers
        mongodb         Applications.Datastores/mongoDatabases
    
    Starting log stream...
    
  4. Open localhost:3000 to interact with the demo container. You should see the container’s connections and metadata, this time with a connection to the backend container and new environment variables set:

    Note the environment variables that are set with connection information for the backend container.

Step 7: Add a gateway

Finally, you can add a gateway to your application. Gateways are used to expose your application to the internet. They can expose a single container or multiple containers.

  1. Add a gateway to your app.bicep file:

    resource gateway 'Applications.Core/gateways@2023-10-01-preview' = {
      name: 'gateway'
      properties: {
        application: application
        routes: [
          {
            path: '/'
            destination: 'http://demo:3000'
          }
        ]
      }
    }
    
  2. Deploy your app with rad deploy:

    rad deploy app.bicep
    
    Building .\app.bicep...
    Deploying template '.\app.bicep' for application 'myapp' and environment 'default' from workspace 'default'...
    
    Deployment In Progress...
    
    Deployment Complete
    
    Resources:
        demo            Applications.Core/containers
        backend         Applications.Core/containers
        gateway         Applications.Core/gateways
        mongodb         Applications.Datastores/mongoDatabases
    
    Public Endpoints:
        gateway         Applications.Core/gateways http://localhost
    
  3. Open the gateway URL in your browser. Unlike before, you are connecting to the gateway instead of directly to the container. You will see the same container connections and metadata as before.

  4. Done! You’ve successfully created your first Radius application.

Next steps

Now that you’ve created your first application, try out more tutorials or jump into the user guides to learn more about Radius.