Patching Sitecore web.config on Azure using VSTS WebApp deploy

With Sitecore, it's a best practice to not copy the web.config to your project, but use transformations. This is a really nice idea, but when deploying Sitecore using the ARM templates to Azure and apply your solution on top of it, you cannot edit the web.config. With the solution below I want to show how to apply config transformations on Azure using the VSTS Web App Service Deploy task. The method is kinda easy once you know how to do it.

First, add the code from configtransfrom to your App_Data\tools folder, the binaries and postdeployment command are stored here. Secondly add a web.azure.config to the project, with the build action set to Content. Lastly, update the release definition and add the postdeployment task to the Web App Service Deploy.

The line in the postdeploy.cmd that does the magic is:

"%WEBROOT_PATH%\App_Data\tools\configtransform\SlowCheetah.Xdt.exe" "%WEBROOT_PATH%\web.config" "%WEBROOT_PATH%\web.azure.config" "%WEBROOT_PATH%\web.config"

To see all other available environment variables run 'set' from the kudu console.

Offcourse the source is available on Github: https://github.com/luuksommers/sitecore-azure-configtransform

Happy transforming!
Luuk