Programming Azure Blobs with Java

  • Article

I'm producing a series of blog post that highlights the work I've done with an O'Reilly media video course. I will produce several posts a week to support this course, as seen below.

https://bit.ly/bruno-does-linux-data-java

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The course is targeted towards developers who want to write Java applications on Linux and host those application in Azure.

These applications talk to today's top data stores, including:

  • Azure Tables
  • Azure Blobs
  • Azure Queues
  • SQL Server
  • SQL Database
  • MySQL
  • PostGres
  • DocumentDB
  • MongoDB
  • Cassandra
  • Redis

Using Java to connect to Azure Blobs

  • Reading and writing blobs is easy with the Azure SDK
  • You will need to:
    • Provision a storage account
    • Reference a container
    • Write code for the blob operations (upload, delete, download, etc)

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Slide 1 - Overview

You can find the Java Storage SDK

  • You can compile your own jar from the latest sources

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Slide 2 - Finding the SDK

The Github Repo with the Java SDK

  • Source code is available
  • We will compile our own Jar file

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Slide 3 - Github

Git Clone

  • Downloading the Azure Java Storage SDK

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Slide 4 - Downloading the SDK to local dev computer

Maven Compile

  • You will need to install and run Maven
  • Explained in course at top of this post

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Slide 5 - Compiling the .java to .class

Using the jar utility to create a JAR file

  • Creating a jar file from all the class files
  • Review
    • Download sources
    • Compile sources
    • Create jar file
    • Add jar file to Eclipse project (future module)

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Slide 6 - Creating jar file

Viewing Jar file

  • You can now see the jar file created
  • You may want to copy it to an easier location
    • Like c:\azure-storage-java

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Slide 7 - Viewing the jar file

Moved jar file to new location

  • Don't want it too deeply buried

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Slide 8 - New jar file location

Creating a new Java project in Eclipse

  • Obviously, I assume you've installed Eclipse
  • Issue a File/New/Java Project

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Slide 9 - Installing Eclipse

Filling out the connection string

  • We have added BlobManager.java
  • You need to go to the portal to fill out the rest
  • Notice the import statements for the Azure Java Storage SDK

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Slide 10 - Adding BlobManager.java

The Azure Portal

  • Notice we have:
    • Storage Account Name
    • Primary Key
  • We will need to paste this into our code

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Slide 11 - Azure Portal

Storage Connection String

  • Notice on line 11 and 12 we have storage account name and primary account key pasted
  • Next we will go to try {} block on line 16

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Slide 12 - Finished connection string

Connecting to storage account

  • Using CloudStorageAccount and CloudBlobClient objects
  • Lines 16 and 17

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Slide 13 - Code to connect

Make sure you have the azurestorage.jar properly referenced

  • It is part of project properties
  • After adding the azurestorage.jar file to project you need to make sure it is part of the Java Build Path.

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Slide 14 - Java build Path