Table of Contents

Preface

Section 1: Getting Started with Azure Bicep

Chapter 1: An Introduction to Azure Bicep

Technical requirements

What is Azure Bicep?

IaC

ARM templates

Azure Bicep

Why was it created?

Why create a new revision?

What about current third-party tools?

How does it work?

Authoring experience

What happens to my ARM templates?

Bicep CLI

Summary

Chapter 2: Installing Azure Bicep

Technical requirements

Cross-platform installation

Installing the Azure CLI

Installing Bicep using the Azure CLI

Installing Bicep using Azure PowerShell

Installation on Windows

Installation using Windows Installer

Installation using Chocolatey

Installation using winget

Manual installation using PowerShell

Manual installation on macOS

Installing Bicep via Homebrew

Installing Bicep via Bash

Manual installation on Linux

Getting nightly builds

Working with Bicep in a Docker container

Working with an Azure CLI Docker container

Summary

Chapter 3: Authoring Experience

Technical requirements

Bicep extension for Visual Studio Code

Installing Visual Studio Code

Installing the Bicep extension

Snippets offered by the Bicep extension

Refactoring

Formatting

Using quick fixes

Configuring the Bicep linter

Customizing the linter

Using the Bicep CLI to use the linter

Bicep Playground

Compiling Bicep snippets

Decompiling an ARM template

Using sample templates in Bicep Playground

Summary

Chapter 4: Compiling and Decompiling Bicep Files

Technical requirements

Compiling Bicep files

Compiling a Bicep file using the Bicep CLI

Compiling and deploying a Bicep file using the Azure CLI

Compiling and deploying a Bicep file using Azure PowerShell

Troubleshooting possible errors and warnings

An invalid template

Linter errors

Decompiling ARM templates into Bicep

Using the Azure CLI

Using the Bicep CLI

Potential fixes after decompiling

Exporting templates and decompiling

Summary

Section 2: Azure Bicep Core Concepts

Chapter 5: Defining Resources

Technical requirements

Resource definition

Common properties

Resource-specific properties

Adding additional properties

Referencing existing resources

Referencing a resource that is in the same file

Referencing an already deployed resource

Explicit dependencies

Visualizing dependencies

Resource scopes

Resource group

Subscription

Management group

Tenant

Setting the scope at the resource level

Multi-scope Bicep files

Global functions

Bicep language specification

Structure

Whitespaces

Comments

Bicep type system

Supported data types

Simple types

Objects

Arrays

Union types

ARM and Bicep syntax comparison

Best practices for Bicep syntax

Summary

Chapter 6: Using Parameters, Variables, and Template Functions

Technical requirements

Parameters

Minimalistic definition

Setting default values

Using decorators

Using parameters within a Bicep template

Passing parameters during deployment

Variables

Defining variables

Using variables

Configuration variables

Template functions

The any function

Date functions

The bool function

Deployment functions

Numeric functions

Array functions

Object functions

Resource functions

String functions

Summary

Chapter 7: Understanding Expressions, Symbolic Names, Conditions, and Loops

Technical requirements

Understanding expressions

Unary operators

Comparison operators

Logical operators

Numeric operators

Accessor operators

Operator precedence and associativity

Exploring conditions

Deploy condition

New or existing resource

Runtime checks

Diving into resource iterations

Syntax

Loop index

Loop array

Loop array and index

Nested loops with conditions

Using batches

Summary

Chapter 8: Defining Modules and Utilizing Outputs

Technical requirements

Modules

Defining modules

Consuming a module

Additional considerations

Defining and configuring module scopes

Using Bicep outputs

Defining outputs

Conditional outputs

Returning multiple outputs with loops

Module outputs

Getting output values after deployment

Summary

Section 3: Deploying Azure Bicep Templates

Chapter 9: Deploying a Local Template

Technical requirements

Deploying Bicep with Azure PowerShell

Connecting to your Azure environment

Previewing changes with the what-if operation

Passing parameters

Deployment scopes

Deploying Bicep with the Azure CLI

Connecting to your Azure environment

Preview changes with what-if operation

Passing parameters

Deployment scopes

Troubleshooting possible errors and warnings

Compile-time errors and warnings

Deployment-time errors

Summary

Chapter 10: Deploying Bicep Using Azure DevOps

Technical requirements

Creating the Azure DevOps pipeline

Prerequisites

Creating a pipeline in Azure DevOps

Adding a validation step to our pipeline

Validating the deployment

Deploying the template

Adding the deployment step

Pushing the changes to your repository

Accessing the deployment output in the pipeline

Receiving outputs from a deployment

An alternative approach to accessing deployment outputs

Summary

Chapter 11: Deploying Bicep Templates Using GitHub Actions

Technical requirements

Creating a GitHub action

Prerequisites

Creating the workflow from code

Adding validation steps to the workflow

Adding an Azure CLI action to the workflow

Adding deployment steps to the workflow

Using the official Azure ARM action

Adding the Azure ARM action to the workflow

Accessing deployment outputs for later use

Accessing outputs from the Azure CLI action

Accessing outputs from the Azure ARM action

Summary

Chapter 12: Exploring Best Practices for Future Maintenance

Technical requirements

Applying version control and code flows for your IaC

Single pipeline approach

Separate pipelines for code and infrastructure

Source control everything

Idempotency and its importance

Idempotency

Immutability

Modularity and microservices

Bicep best practices

Parameters

Variables

Resource definitions

Outputs

Configuration set

Shared variable file

Managing service version updates

Azure Bicep's known limitations

Single-line objects and arrays

Newline sensitivity

No support for API profiles

CLI limitations

Summary

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