You have already seen AWS S3 with ColdFusion. In this blog I will cover cloud storage using Azure BLOB.

Pre-requisites:

• Azure account
• Azure Connection String
• Installing ‘azureblob’ package. For more information, see ColdFusion Package Manager.

Introduction

Blob or Binary Large OBject include images, text files, videos, or audio. Azure BLOB storage is a persistent data storage in cloud, which you can utilize to store BLOB data.

Getting Started

Create an AzureBlobService object using an Azure connection string.

<cfscript>
// In this example AZURE is the vendor
//Example for connection string:  Endpoint=sb://{namespace}.servicebus.windows.net/;SharedAccessKeyName=key};SharedAccessKey={key}
credential  = {
"vendorName" : "AZURE",
"connectionString" : "xxxxxxx"
}

// configuration object tells to create service object for Azure BLOB.
// many other things can be passed with in struct for azure blob but let’s keep it simple for this blog
configuration  = {
"serviceName" : "AZURE_BLOB"
}

//getCloudService method give service handle for Azure Blob, 
blobService = getCloudService(credential, configuration)
</cfscript>

Create a container

You can create a container using ‘container’ or ‘createContainer’. Let’s see an example to create container using blobService obtained in previous step.

<cfscript>
containerName = "first-container" & now().getTime()  //now().getTime() is appended to make the container unique.
newContainerRequest = {
"containerName" : containerName,
"publicAccessType"= "blob"
}
contObj = blobService.createContainer(newContainerRequest);
// for already existing Container->
// contObj  = blobService.container(containerName);
</cfscript>

List containers

To list all the containers within an account “listAll” method of blobService object will be used.

<cfscript>
containerList=blobService.listAll();
writeDump(containerList)
</cfscript>

Delete a container

To delete a container in an account, the “delete” method of blobService object will be used.

<cfscript>
blobService.delete(containerName)
</cfscript>

Upload a file to a container

Now let’s upload a file to the container using “uploadFile” method of blobService object. We can pass attributes such as accessConditions, context and options. But let’s keep it simple in the example.

<cfscript>
fileToBeUploaded = "xyz.txt";
key= "xyz";
uploadRequest =  {
"srcFile": fileToBeUploaded,
"blobName": blobName
}
uploadResponse = contObj.uploadFile(uploadRequest);
</cfscript>

Download a BLOB to a file

We have already uploaded a file to the container, now let’s download it using ‘downloadToFile’.

<cfscript>
downloadedFile = "downloaded-xyx.txt";
downloadRequest =  {
"destinationFIle": downloadedFile ,
"blobName": blobName
}
downloadResponse = contObj.downloadToFile(downloadRequest);
</cfscript>

List BLOBs in a container

We can list the blobs in the container using ‘listAll’. This method can also take a struct with few parameters.

<cfscript>
containerObjects = contObj.listAll();
writeDump(containerObjects);
</cfscript>

Delete a Blob in a container

You can delete a blob using ‘delete’ method.

<cfscript>
contObjects= contObj.delete(blobName);
</cfscript>

Copy Blobs from one container to another 

In the below example we are copying a blob from the container ‘sourceContainer’ to another container ‘destinationContainer’

<cfscript>
destContainerObj = blobService.container(destinationContainer);
copyRequest = {
"source": sourceContainer/sourceBlobName,
"storageClass" : "HOT",
"blobName" : "destBlobName"
}
copyResponse= destContainerObj.copy(copyRequest);
</cfscript>

Store different versions of an object

You can create different versions of an already existing blob, which is present inside a container.  Use the method “CreateSnapshot” for creating a version.

<cfscript>
versionRequest = {
"blobName" : "Version-1"
}
snapshot1 = contObj.Createsnapshot(versionRequest);
</cfscript>

Adding Shared Access Signature (SAS)  to a Blob

Consider a scenario where you’ve uploaded a Blob to a Container. Now you want to share the container with read-only access. You can create an SAS with limited access (read-only) and share the container with another user. The result is that the second user can download the blob from the container but cannot upload data in the container. The method used to add SAS to a blob is ‘GenerateSas’.

<cfscript>
sasRequest = {
"blobName": blobName,
"policy": {
"permissions": ["READ"]
}}
sharedAccessSignature = contObj.GenerateSas (sasRequest);
</cfscript>

Upload a Blob parallelly

An object can be uploaded in parts parallelly. The part size can be mentioned in ‘singleBlobPutThresholdInBytes’.

<cfscript>
fileToBeUploaded = "xyz.txt";
key= "xyz";
uploadRequest =  {
"srcFile": fileToBeUploaded,
"blobName" : blobName,
"options" : {
"concurrentRequestCount": 30,
"singleBlobPutThresholdInBytes":6.4e+7
}
}
uploadResponse = contObj.parallelUploadFile(uploadRequest);
</cfscript>

Download a blob parallelly

We have already uploaded a blob in parallel, now let’s download that blob in parallel.

<cfscript>
downloadedFile = "downloaded-xyx.txt"
downloadRequest =  {
"destinationFIle": downloadedFile ,
"blobName" : blobName,
"options" : {
"concurrentRequestCount": 30,
"singleBlobPutThresholdInBytes":6.4e+7
}
}
downloadResponse = contObj.parallelDownloadFile(downloadRequest);
</cfscript>

Upload directories

You can upload a directory to the container using ‘uploadDirectory’

<cfscript>
directoryToBeUploaded = "abc_directory";
prefix= "abc";
uploadRequest =  {
"sourceDirectory": directoryToBeUploaded,
"prefix": prefix,        // prefix that will be added to the blob name.
"isIncludeSubDirectories" : "true"
}
uploadResponse = contObj.uploadDirectory(uploadRequest);
</cfscript>

Upload an object

ColdFusion Objects such as array, list, string etc can be uploaded to a container using ‘uploadObject’

<cfscript>
blobName = "xyz";
array1=[1,2,3,4,5];
uploadRequestsstruct ={
"object" : array1,
"blobName" : blobName,
"type" :"json",
"options":{
"maximumExecutionTimeInMs" : 1000
}
}
uploadResponse = contObj.uploadObject(uploadRequest);
</cfscript>

Download an object

You can also download an object that was uploaded using ‘downloadObject’

<cfscript>
blobName = "xyz";
downloadRequestsstruct ={
"blobName" : blobName,
"type" :"json”
}
uploadResponse = contObj.downloadObject(downloadRequestsstruct);
</cfscript>

Lease

A lease on a Blob enables you to be granted ownership to a Blob. You can perform different operations such as Acquire lease, Renew lease, Change lease, Release lease and Break lease. Let’s see an example for Acquire lease and break lease.

<cfscript>
aquireLeaseRequest = {
“blobName”: blobName,
“leaseTimeInSeconds”: 3600,
“proposedLeaseID”: “9876543”  // optional, if proposedLeaseId is a value of leaseId proposed by user.
}
contObj.acuireLease(aquireLeaseRequest);
breakLeaseRequest = {
"blobName": blobName,
"accessCondition" : { "leaseID" :" 9876543"  }
}
contObj.breakLease(breakLeaseRequest)
</cfscript>

Upload a file in blocks

It takes place in three steps.

1. Break file into blocks

<cfscript>
fileToBeUploaded=”xyz.zip”;
blobName=”xyz”;
createPartFileRequest = {
"srcFile": fileToBeUploaded,
"blockSizeInBytes": 102400,
"destinationDirectory": "Destination"
}
partFileSet = contObj.createPartFiles(createPartFileRequest)  //The file has been divided into parts
</cfscript>

2. Upload block with Block Ids.

<cfscript>
blockIds = ArrayNew(1);   //Array to store the block ids
blockIdItr = "ddd"
count=1
for(partFile in partFileSet ["partFiles"]) {
bid=""&(1000 + count)     //toBase64(URLEncodedFormat(“ddd”&count))
structUpload = {
"blockId": bid,
"blobName": blobName,
"srcFile": partFile
}
contObj.blockUpload(structUpload);
arrayAppend(blockIds, bid)
count=count+1
}
</cfscript>

3. Commit the Block Ids

<cfscript>
commitBlockList = {
"blockIds": blockIds,
"blobName": blobName
}
contObj.commitBlockList(commitBlockList);
</cfscript>