Problems deploying Office 365 SharePoint app against live Azure backend

Question

I'm building a SharePoint 15 App for Office 365 and would like to test the app against the live deployment of its back end before I submit it to the Office Store but I am having some difficulty.

I have set-up a developer preview site and I have deployed my application code to Windows Azure but am struggling to deploy the Office 365 App itself.

The application consists of a provider hosted back-end that serves up content into a provider-hosted page and into an App Part.

As the app will be provider hosted I have performed the following steps before attempting to deploy it to my developer site...

• replaced ~remoteAppUrl with my app's Azure url (E.G. https://myappname.azurewebsites.net) in AppManifest.xml and Elements.xml.
• Replaced ClientID="*" in AppManifest.xml with the Client ID generated in the Seller Dashboard.
• Updated my consumer secret and ID in the web.config of my back-end.

When I try to deploy the app to my Office 365 SharePoint Developer Preview site I get an error message...

Error occurred in deployment step 'Install App for SharePoint': The remote server returned >an unexpected response: (405) Method Not Allowed.

If I try and deploy the app again I get a different error message

Error occurred in deployment step 'Uninstall App for SharePoint': Value cannot be null. Parameter name: value

After this point it is impossible to remove the app from SharePoint. Retracting using Visual Studio 2012 doesn't work and deleting the app itself in SharePoint just re-loads the page and the app is still there. The only solution I have found for this is to delete and re-create the entire site collection.

Answer 1

OK, so it turns out that I don't actually need to replace ~remoteAppUrl, the ClientID or the Consumer Secret and Consumer ID, instead I did this.....

1. Unlink the app from its web project.
2. In the web application properties panel, in the web tab, select Use custom web server and enter the address of the Azure site you are deploying to.
3. Clear the ClientID and ClientSecret from web.config.
4. Deploy the application only to the SharePoint test site which writes in the ID and Secret.
5. Deploy the web application to Azure.