Azure tables are an excellent way to store structured data in a query-able NoSQL database. Azure provides a variety of ways to interact with this data, including a REST API, which allows you to use Azure Table storage with simple HTTP requests. In this lab, you will be able to interact with the Azure Table service REST API by using it to retrieve and store data.
Learning Objectives
Successfully complete this lab by achieving the following learning objectives:
- Save a copy of the table’s entity data to a file.
- Set up some environment variables to aid in generating a signature. For the
storage_accountandaccess_key, provide the actual storage account name and access key. One way to obtain these is to log in to the Azure portal. The access key can be found by clicking the storage account, then clickingAccess Keys:
storage_account=${your storage account name} access_key=${your storage account access key} table_name=inventory request_date=$(TZ=GMT date "+%a, %d %h %Y %H:%M:%S %Z") resource="/${storage_account}/${table_name}" request_method="GET"- Generate a signature and Authorization header:
string_to_sign="${request_method}nnn${request_date}n${resource}" hex_key="$(echo -n $access_key | base64 -d -w0 | xxd -p -c256)" signature=$(printf "$string_to_sign" | openssl dgst -sha256 -mac HMAC -macopt "hexkey:$hex_key" -binary | base64 -w0) authorization_header="SharedKey $storage_account:$signature"- Make a request to query for all entities currently in the table, redirecting the output to a file:
curl -s -X $request_method -H "x-ms-date:$request_date" -H "Authorization:$authorization_header" "https://${storage_account}.table.core.windows.net/${table_name}" > /home/cloud_user/entities.txt- Check the contents of the file to see the entity data:
cat /home/cloud_user/entities.txtYou should see some XML representing the existing entities.
- Set up some environment variables to aid in generating a signature. For the
- Insert a new entity into the table.
- Set up some environment variables to aid in generating a signature:
request_date=$(TZ=GMT date "+%a, %d %h %Y %H:%M:%S %Z") request_method="POST" content_type="application/json"- Generate a signature and Authorization header:
string_to_sign="${request_method}nn${content_type}n${request_date}n${resource}" hex_key="$(echo -n $access_key | base64 -d -w0 | xxd -p -c256)" signature=$(printf "$string_to_sign" | openssl dgst -sha256 -mac HMAC -macopt "hexkey:$hex_key" -binary | base64 -w0) authorization_header="SharedKey $storage_account:$signature"- Set up your entity data:
entity="{"PartitionKey":"warehouse1","RowKey":"A4452","Description":"Trophy Collection","OwnerName":"Sgt. Pepper","Unit":"554"}" entity_length=${#entity}- Make a request to insert the entity:
curl -X $request_method -H "x-ms-date:$request_date" -H "x-ms-version:2019-02-02" -H "Content-Type:$content_type" -H "Content-Length:$entity_length" -H "Authorization:$authorization_header" -d "$entity" "https://${storage_account}.table.core.windows.net/${table_name}"The output should include an
<updated />tag with a timestamp, indicating when the record was inserted.
