Daily Development

Uploading to Azure Blob Containers: AZCopy 403 Error

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The Problem

  • Azure Explorer is uploading too slow
  • AZCopy copy feature will not upload.  Error:  “RESPONSE Status: 403 This request is not authorized to perform this operation using this permission.”

Today, I was trying to upload a directory (1.3gb) of images up for blob storage for public access.   Though I often use Azure Storage Explorer for smaller uploads, it was proving impossible with this large directory.  My connection came to a grinding halt and the files where taking impossibly too long to upload.

So, upon research, I learned that AZCopy is much more efficient with larger data transfers and after success, I found this to be true.  However,  using a direct URL as per the docs was giving me a 403 error, despite me being owner of container and container seeming to have proper permissions.  So I decided to use an SAS key at end of URL (also in docs) and the apply the azcopy copy command.

Below is how I proceeded to get it working.

The Solution

Tools used:

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Daily Development

Share Azure Blobs with Search and Tree View

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The idea behind this was to create a nice, easy UI that users can download media files they request often.  We moved it to Azure to prevent killing our on-prem bandwidth, but then I had to deal with the flat file structure, etc.  The end result was simply: a fast search of all the blobs (with link) and underneath that, a tree structure of the blobs that they can browse through.

The Set Up

First, I created a Storage container through Azure Portal, then I used Azure Storage Explorer to create a Blob Container under that storage account.  I also set read-only permissions to my blobs by right clicking the container in Azure Storage Explorer, then: Set Container Public Access Level > Public Read Access for Blobs Only.

To make this code work, I needed to setup an environment variable for my connection string.  I used the prefix CUSTOMCONNSTR_ on my variable name as it comes in handy when deploying to Azure Web Apps.  To get the connection string:  Azure Portal > Storage Account you created > Access Keys.

setx CUSTOMCONNSTR_storageConnectionString "<yourconnectionstring>"

Finally, I got a folder I wanted to share and dragged and dropped it into my Container using Azure Storage Explorer.

Tools Used

I used .NET Core to query the container and list the blobs, with segments.  I then looped through that list, creating a formatted JSON string that I could feed to zTree (I preferred the Font-Awesome styling shown here).   I also simultaneously created a list of the blobs into formatted JSON that I could also feed to Ajax for a quick search.

The Code

Check out the code on GitHub

Demo

Sharing Azure Blobs on Azure Web Services

 

When deploying to Azure Web App Services:  Web App > Application Settings > Connection Strings, name is: storageConnectionString, value:  string copied from container assets, type: Custom

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Daily Development

Azure Blob’s Ghost Folders?

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This week I had to address a upload image to blob application that I had built in my development environment, was working fine, but needed to be configured to work in production.  For the application overall, I used Azure Samples for Upload Image to Storage (built in .NET Core).  In it, the configuration in appsettings.json looks like this:

"AzureStorageConfig": {
    "AccountName": "",
    "AccountKey": "",
    "ImageContainer": "images",
    "ThumbnailContainer": "thumbnails"
}

 

Account Name account name and AccountKey are easily found in Azure Portal, for container I used Azure Storage Explorer just so I could get a full look at the container and its blobs.  The problem was, in my development environment I was uploading DIRECTLY to container.  In the example above, I was uploading to the “images” container.  In my Production environment, though, my ImagesContainer had two folders:  images/small and images/large.  I tried to change the “ImagesContainer”:”images” to “ImagesContainer”:”images/small”, “ImagesContainer”:”images\small” and no go.  Requested URI not found.

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