MS Tech Talk: "How do I use a Shared Access Signature (SAS) in managed code to access Azure Storage?"

Question

Is it possible to use managed code to download and list blobs in a storage account using only SAS as authorization, or is SAS’s utility limited to the REST API?

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MS Tech Talk persona

Answer 1

There is only one API to Windows Azure storage, and it is REST.  The .NET StorageClient library is a wrapper around the REST API and yes, it supports Shared Access Signatures.

 

For instruction on how to create and implement a SAS via the .NET StorageClient library, see Steve Marx’s blog post:  http://blog.smarx.com/posts/shared-access-signatures-are-easy-these-days

 

Read the whole blog, but the following text contains the most relevant information:

// now just use the SAS to do blob operations
var sasCreds = new StorageCredentialsSharedAccessSignature(sas);
// new client using the same endpoint (including account name),
//  but using the SAS as the credentials
var sasBlob = new CloudBlobClient(account.BlobEndpoint, sasCreds)
  .GetBlobReference("testcontainer/test.txt");
sasBlob.UploadText("Hello again!");
Console.WriteLine(sasBlob.DownloadText());

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MS Tech Talk persona

Answer 2

I did a blog post on Access Control for Azure Blobs that goes into shared-access signatures in gory detail.