Programming Azure Blobs With Java

I’m producing a series of blog posts 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.

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

The course is targeted towards developers who want to write Java applications on Linux and host those applications 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)

Slide 1 – Overview

You Can Find the Java Storage SDK

• You can compile your own jar from the latest sources

Slide 2 – Finding the SDK

The Github Repo With the Java SDK

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

Slide 3 – Github

Git Clone

• Downloading the Azure Java Storage SDK

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

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)

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

Slide 7 – Viewing the jar file

Moved Jar File to New Location

• Don’t want it too deeply buried

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

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

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

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

Slide 12 – Finished connection string

Connecting to Storage Account

• Using CloudStorageAccount and CloudBlobClient objects
• Lines 16 and 17

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.

Slide 14 – Java build Path