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Pdf Library for .NET

Deployment to Azure Container Apps

Azure Container Apps runs container images and scales them with the traffic, down to zero when idle. SelectPdf runs there in a Linux image built from the standard mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet image, as its non-root user, with nothing installed.

The image

Reference the three packages in the application:

XML
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<ItemGroup>
  <PackageReference Include="SelectPdf.HtmlToPdf.Universal" Version="26.4.0" />
  <PackageReference Include="SelectPdf.Universal.Native.linux-x64"
                    Version="26.4.0" />
  <PackageReference Include="SelectPdf.Universal.Fonts" Version="26.4.0" />
</ItemGroup>

and publish it into a .NET image:

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FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/sdk:10.0 AS build
WORKDIR /src
COPY . .
RUN dotnet publish MyApp.csproj -c Release -o /app

FROM mcr.microsoft.com/dotnet/aspnet:10.0
WORKDIR /app
COPY --from=build /app .
USER app
EXPOSE 8080
ENTRYPOINT ["dotnet", "MyApp.dll"]

See Deployment with Docker for more about images.

Step by step

1. Prepare the subscription (once):

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az login
az extension add --name containerapp --upgrade
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.App --wait
az provider register --namespace Microsoft.OperationalInsights --wait

2. Create a resource group and a container registry, and push the image (the registry name is global):

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az group create --name selectpdf-rg --location westeurope
az acr create --resource-group selectpdf-rg --name selectpdfregistry \
    --sku Basic --admin-enabled true
az acr login --name selectpdfregistry
docker build --platform linux/amd64 -t selectpdfregistry.azurecr.io/myapp:1 .
docker push selectpdfregistry.azurecr.io/myapp:1

3. Create the environment and wait until it reports Succeeded, which can take several minutes:

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az containerapp env create --name selectpdf-env \
    --resource-group selectpdf-rg --location westeurope
az containerapp env show --name selectpdf-env --resource-group selectpdf-rg \
    --query properties.provisioningState

4. Create the container app:

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az containerapp create --name selectpdf-app --resource-group selectpdf-rg \
    --environment selectpdf-env \
    --image selectpdfregistry.azurecr.io/myapp:1 \
    --registry-server selectpdfregistry.azurecr.io \
    --target-port 8080 --ingress external --cpu 2 --memory 4Gi \
    --min-replicas 0 --max-replicas 3 \
    --scale-rule-name http --scale-rule-type http \
    --scale-rule-http-concurrency 8

  • --cpu 2 --memory 4Gi is the largest consumption size; Chromium needs both.

  • --scale-rule-http-concurrency 8 starts another replica when one is converting 8 pages, the number SelectPdf converts at once by default.

  • --min-replicas 0 scales to zero when idle, and the first request then waits about 20 seconds for a replica to start. Use --min-replicas 1 to keep one ready.

What to expect

Measured in October 2026 (West Europe, consumption profile, 2 vCPU / 4 GiB): every conversion succeeded, every language rendered, and a warm replica converted selectpdf.com in about 1.3 seconds.

Sample

The official samples include this deployment, with a step-by-step README, in the cloud/azure-container-apps folder of the edition's samples.

See Also