Azure Storage Service: Getting Started Guide

  1. Sign up for an Azure Account
  2. Get your account and key
    • Login to the Microsoft Azure Portal. The new portal is in preview stage and hence instructions are not aligned with it.
    • Click 'New', 'Data Servies', 'Storage' and 'Quick Create'.
    • Enter the Storage Account Name. Make sure the account is available and then click Create
      • This is your Storage account name you use in jclouds.
    • Under the main Azure screen, you should see Cloud Storage and the service you setup; Click on that.
    • Click on 'Manage Access Keys' at bottom of the page and copy Primary Access Key.
      • Primary Access Key is the key you use in jclouds
  3. Ensure you are using a recent JDK 6
  4. Setup your project to include azureblob
    • Get the dependency org.apache.jclouds.provider/azureblob using jclouds Installation.
  5. Setup your project to include 'guava'. Include following dependency to jclouds Installation. Update the version mentioned in dependency below to the latest available version. com.google.guava guava 16.0
  6. Start coding. Replace values in angular brackets <> with actual values.
import org.jclouds.blobstore.*;
import org.jclouds.ContextBuilder;
import org.jclouds.blobstore.domain.*;
import org.jclouds.azureblob.*;
import com.google.common.io.*;
import java.io.*;

String storageAccountName = "<Your storage account name>";
String storageAccountKey = "<Your storage account primary access key>";
String containerName = "<Your container name>";
String blobFullyQualifiedFileName = "<Fully qualified filename>";
String blobName = "<Your blob name>";

// Get a context with amazon that offers the portable BlobStore api
BlobStoreContext context = ContextBuilder.newBuilder("azureblob")
                 .credentials(storageAccountName, storageAccountKey)
                 .buildView(BlobStoreContext.class);

// Access the BlobStore
BlobStore blobStore = context.getBlobStore();

// Create a Container
blobStore.createContainerInLocation(null, containerName);

// Create a blob. 
ByteSource payload = Files.asByteSource(new File(blobFullyQualifiedFileName));
Blob blob = context.getBlobStore().blobBuilder(blobName)
    .payload(payload)  // or InputStream
    .contentLength(payload.size())
    .build();

// Upload the Blob
blobStore.putBlob(containerName, blob);

// When you need access to azureblob-specific features, use the provider-specific context
AzureBlobClient azureBlobClient = context.unwrapApi(AzureBlobClient.class);
Object object = azureBlobClient.getBlobProperties(containerName, blobName);

System.out.println("Object: " + object);
context.close();

To use Azure Active Directory with Azure Blob storage, follow these steps:

  1. Setup Azure CLI
  2. Create a new Azure App: az ad app create --display-name <name> --password <password>
  3. Create a new service principal: az ad sp create --id <Application-id>
  4. Assign a Storage Blob Data Contributor role to the app: az role assignment create --role "Storage Blob Data Contributor" --assignee <service principal ID>
  5. Lookup the tenant ID: az account show

In step 2, note the Azure Application ID returned. It will be used to create the service principal. In step 3, note the service principal ID returned -- it is required in step 4 to assign the role so that the service principal can access the storage account.

Now you can use Azure Blob using Azure AD authentication. The required properties are: