Developing Cloud Applications with Windows Azure Storage: Blobs
- 3/15/2013
- Blob basics
- Blob containers
- Blob addressing
- Business use cases
- Blob storage structure
- Navigating blob container hierarchies
- Storage Client library blob types
- Container and blob naming rules
- Performing create, read, update, and delete blob operations
- Shared Access Signatures and shared access policies
- Blob attributes and metadata
- Conditional operations
- Blob leases
- Using block blobs
- Using page blobs
- Blob snapshots
- Continuation tokens and blobs
- Conclusion
Storage Client library blob types
The Storage Client library provides abstractions for blobs and containers, making them easy to work with in the Microsoft .NET Framework code. The following alphabetized list explains the most important types, methods, and properties used in the topics covered later in this chapter:
CloudBlob provides a convenient object-oriented abstraction for working with an individual blob.
CloudBlobContainer provides a convenient object-oriented abstraction for working with a blob storage container.
CopyFromBlob copies an existing blob’s contents, properties, and metadata to a new blob.
Create[IfNotExist] creates a blob container or optionally creates the container only if the container does not already exist.
Delete deletes a blob container and its contents.
FetchAttributes returns the container’s attributes, including its system properties and any user-defined metadata.
Get/SetPermissions gets or sets the permission settings for the container.
GetBlobReference returns a reference to a blob in the container.
GetSharedAccessSignature returns a shared access signature for the container.
ListBlobs[Segmented] returns an enumerable collection of the blobs in the container, or a segmented enumerable collection of the blobs in the container.
Metadata returns the user-defined metadata for the blob or blob container.
Name returns the name of the blob or blob container.
OpenWrite/Read opens a stream for reading or writing the blob’s contents.
Properties returns the blob’s system properties.
SnapshotTime returns the DateTime value that uniquely identifies the snapshot (only when the blob is a snapshot).
Upload(ByteArray/File/FromStream/Text) uploads data from a byte array, file, stream, or string to a blob.
Uri returns the blob or container’s address.