Azure Image Chooser

Azure Image Chooser is a Node.js application that allows users to select Azure VM images from the Azure Marketplace.

Azure Image Chooser has a TypeScript backend (Express) and a React frontend (Vite). At the time of writing this, Node.js 24 is used by the container image and is the recommended version for local runs.

You can run it on your local machine or deploy to any platform that runs containers.

Environment variables

Required for both local and container run:

• AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID: Azure subscription used for Marketplace queries.

Authentication variables (only needed when identity is not provided by the environment):

• AZURE_TENANT_ID: Microsoft Entra tenant ID for service principal auth.
• AZURE_CLIENT_ID: Service principal (app registration) client ID.
• AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET: Service principal client secret.

Optional:

• PORT: Backend listening port. Default is 3000.

Local run notes:

• AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID must be set.
• Use either Azure CLI login (az login) or the service principal variables above.

Container run notes:

• AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID must be passed to the container.
• Pass AZURE_TENANT_ID, AZURE_CLIENT_ID, and AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET unless your container runtime provides identity (for example Managed Identity / Workload Identity).

Running on a local machine

Load environment variables from the repository environment file:

set -a; source azure.env; set +a

Execute the following commands to install dependencies, build, and run the app:

cd app/backend
npm ci

cd ../frontend
npm ci

cd backend
npm run build

cd ../frontend
npm run build

cd ../backend
npm run start

The app will block the terminal and start a web server on port 3000. Open http://localhost:3000 in your browser.

Running with Docker

Build and run the container:

docker build -t azure-image-chooser-node ./app
docker run --rm -p 3000:3000 \
  -e AZURE_SUBSCRIPTION_ID="subscription_id" \
  -e AZURE_CLIENT_ID="client_id" \
  -e AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET="client_secret" \
  -e AZURE_TENANT_ID="tenant_id" \
  azure-image-chooser-node

NOTE: As with local runs, you can omit AZURE_CLIENT_ID, AZURE_CLIENT_SECRET, and AZURE_TENANT_ID when the runtime environment already provides Azure credentials.