How to access an object in Microsoft Azure Storage Service publicly?

Question

I would like to upload some images to be stored in Azure, I discovered that there is called 'Storage' in Blob, after doing some research I was able create my account in storage service and I'm accessing it with 'Azure Storage Explorer'.

1)There's another software that I could access my storage account ? Or another way to do it ?

2)What's the difference between 'public container' and 'public blob'?

3)I would like to create sub-folders, how can I do that ?

4)How can I make an image that I upload to the 'public blog' called 'image', been like this image\azure.png and be accessible from anyone in internet ?

In S3 (from Amazon) you can say if that object is public and then access it from certain url. Is that possible do that with Azure Storage service ?

I know is a lot of questions but for me it seems a little complicated to understand these things and how make them work for now.

Solution

Here are the answers to your questions:

1. The only 'official' way to access your storage account is through the REST API (or an SDK using this API). Besides that there are a few good tools that allow you to access your storage account:

   • http://www.cerebrata.com/products/cloudstoragestudio/
   • http://www.cloudberrylab.com/free-microsoft-azure-explorer.aspx
   • https://www.myazurestorage.com/ (web based!)
   • http://azurestorageexplorer.codeplex.com/

2. Public container allows you to get a list of all blobs available in that container and get container metadata. Public blob means you have to know the exact url to the blob in order to access it. Reference: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/dd179354

3. Directories don't really exist. Just rename your blob in "mydir/myblob.txt" for example to simulate directories. If you use the tool by CloudBerry you will see the directory structure (I use this for storing files).

4. Change the container permission to public blob, upload the image. Then it will be available on the url (here I'm assuming your container is called image): http://YOURSTORAGEACCOUNTHERE.blob.core.windows.net/image/azure.png

Comments

[Valter Silva]

Hi, CloudBerry it's really very good option, but I think it's a little weird rename the object to simulate a sub-folder, isn't ? I have lots of picture to upload. I was able to see my image publicly, but, only using https:\\ not http:\\, did you know why is that ? When I create my container with CloudBerry I selected 'Full public read access', but still only accessing with https.

[Sandrino Di Mattia]

With CloudBerry you can use directories (choose your storage account in one window and your local disk in the other, and drag and drop the folder to your container). Then once the files are uploaded, you can right click the file and choose Web URL to see the url. You can also try the tool CloudXplorer to upload files (looks like Windows Explorer)