Azure Storage File client library for Python

Azure File offers fully managed file shares in the cloud that are accessible via the industry standard Server Message Block (SMB) protocol. Azure file shares can be mounted concurrently by cloud or on-premises deployments of Windows, Linux, and macOS. Additionally, Azure file shares can be cached on Windows Servers with Azure File Sync for fast access near where the data is being used.

Azure file shares can be used to:

• Replace or supplement on-premises file servers
• "Lift and shift" applications
• Simplify cloud development with shared application settings, diagnostic share, and Dev/Test/Debug tools

Source code | Package (PyPi) | API reference documentation | Product documentation | Samples

Getting started

Install the package

Install the Azure Storage File client library for Python with pip:

pip install azure-storage-file

Prerequisites: You must have an Azure subscription, and a Storage Account to use this package.

To create a Storage Account, you can use the Azure Portal, Azure PowerShell or Azure CLI:

az storage account create -n MyStorageAccountName -g MyResourceGroupName

Requires Python 2.7, 3.5 or later to use this package.

Authenticate the client

Interaction with Storage File starts with an instance of the FileServiceClient class. You need an existing storage account, its URL, and a credential to instantiate the client object.

Get credentials

To authenticate the client you have a few options:

1. Use a SAS token string
2. Use an account shared access key

Alternatively, you can authenticate with a storage connection string using the from_connection_string method. See example: Client creation with a connection string.

You can omit the credential if your account URL already has a SAS token.

Create client

Once you have your account URL and credentials ready, you can create the FileServiceClient:

from azure.storage.file import FileServiceClient

service = FileServiceClient(account_url="https://<my-storage-account-name>.file.core.windows.net/", credential=credential)

Key concepts

File storage includes the following concepts:

• The storage account
• A file storage share
• An optional hierarchy of directories
• A file in the share which may be up to 1 TiB in size

Clients

The Storage File SDK provides four different clients to interact with the File Service:

1. FileServiceClient - this client interacts with the File Service at the account level. It provides operations to retrieve and configure the service properties as well as list, create, and delete shares within the storage account. For operations relating to a specific share, a client for that entity can also be retrieved using the get_share_client function.
2. ShareClient - this client represents interaction with a specific file share, although that share need not exist yet. It provides operations to create, delete, or configure shares and includes operations to list and create files or directories. For operations relating to a specific directory or file, those clients can also be retrieved using the get_directory_client or get_file_client functions.
3. DirectoryClient - this client represents interaction with a specific directory, although that directory need not exist yet. It provides operations to create, delete, and list directories and subdirectories, as well as create and delete files in the directory. For operations relating to a specific subdirectory or file, a client for that entity can also be retrieved using the get_subdirectory_client and get_file_client functions.
4. FileClient - this client represents interaction with a specific file, although the file need not exist yet. It provides operations to create, upload, copy, and download files as well as more advanced operations.

For details on path naming restrictions, see Naming and Referencing Shares, Directories, Files, and Metadata.

Examples

The following sections provide several code snippets covering some of the most common Storage File tasks, including:

• Client creation with a connection string
• Create a file share
• Upload a file

Client creation with a connection string

Create the FileServiceClient using the connection string to your Azure Storage account.

from azure.storage.file import FileServiceClient

service = FileServiceClient.from_connection_string("my_connection_string")

Create a file share

Create a file share to store your files.

from azure.storage.file import ShareClient

share = ShareClient.from_connection_string("my_connection_string", share="myshare")
share.create_share()

Upload a file

Upload a file to the share

from azure.storage.file import FileClient

file_client = FileClient.from_connection_string("my_connection_string", share="share", file_path="myfile")

with open("./SampleSource.txt", "rb") as source_file:
    file_client.upload_file(source_file)

Troubleshooting

Storage File clients raise exceptions defined in Azure Core.

All File service operations will throw a StorageErrorException on failure with helpful error codes.

Next steps

More sample code

Get started with our File samples.

Several Storage File Python SDK samples are available to you in the SDK's GitHub repository. These samples provide example code for additional scenarios commonly encountered while working with Storage File:

• test_file_samples_hello_world.py - Examples found in this article:

  • Client creation
  • Create a file share
  • Upload a file

• test_file_samples_authentication.py - Examples for authenticating and creating the client:

  • From a connection string
  • From a shared access key
  • From a shared access signature token

• test_file_samples_service.py - Examples for interacting with the file service:

  • Get and set service properties
  • Create, list, and delete shares
  • Get a share client

• test_file_samples_share.py - Examples for interacting with file shares:

  • Create a share snapshot
  • Set share quota and metadata
  • List directories and files
  • Get the directory or file client to interact with a specific entity

• test_file_samples_directory.py - Examples for interacting with directories:

  • Create a directory and add files
  • Create and delete subdirectories
  • Get the subdirectory client

• test_file_samples_file.py - Examples for interacting with files:

  • Create, upload, download, and delete files
  • Copy a file from a URL

Additional documentation

For more extensive documentation on the Azure Storage File, see the Azure Storage File documentation on docs.microsoft.com.

Contributing

This project welcomes contributions and suggestions. Most contributions require you to agree to a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) declaring that you have the right to, and actually do, grant us the rights to use your contribution. For details, visit https://cla.microsoft.com.

When you submit a pull request, a CLA-bot will automatically determine whether you need to provide a CLA and decorate the PR appropriately (e.g., label, comment). Simply follow the instructions provided by the bot. You will only need to do this once across all repos using our CLA.

This project has adopted the Microsoft Open Source Code of Conduct. For more information see the Code of Conduct FAQ or contact opencode@microsoft.com with any additional questions or comments.

Change Log azure-storage-file

Version 12.0.0b2:

Breaking changes

• Renamed copy_file_from_url to start_copy_from_url and changed behaviour to return a dictionary of copy properties rather than a polling object. Status of the copy operation can be retrieved with the get_file_properties operation.
• Added abort_copy operation to the FileClient class. This replaces the previous abort operation on the copy status polling operation.
• The behavior of listing operations has been modified:
  • The previous marker parameter has been removed.
  • The iterable response object now supports a by_page function that will return a secondary iterator of batches of results. This function supports a continuation_token parameter to replace the previous marker parameter.
• The new listing behaviour is also adopted by the receive_messages operation:
  • The receive operation returns a message iterator as before.
  • The returned iterator supports a by_page operation to receive messages in batches.

New features

• Added async APIs to subnamespace azure.storage.file.aio.
• Distributed tracing framework OpenCensus is now supported.

Dependency updates

• Adopted azure-core 1.0.0b2

  • If you later want to revert to azure-storage-file 12.0.0b1, or another Azure SDK library requiring azure-core 1.0.0b1, you must explicitly install azure-core 1.0.0b1 as well. For example:

  pip install azure-core==1.0.0b1 azure-storage-file==12.0.0b1

Fixes and improvements

• Fix for closing file handles - continuation token was not being passed to subsequent calls.
• General refactor of duplicate and shared code.

Version 12.0.0b1:

Version 12.0.0b1 is the first preview of our efforts to create a user-friendly and Pythonic client library for Azure Storage Files. For more information about this, and preview releases of other Azure SDK libraries, please visit https://aka.ms/azure-sdk-preview1-python.

Breaking changes: New API design

• Operations are now scoped to a particular client:

  • FileServiceClient: This client handles account-level operations. This includes managing service properties and listing the shares within an account.
  • ShareClient: The client handles operations for a particular share. This includes creating or deleting that share, as well as listing the directories within that share, and managing properties and metadata.
  • DirectoryClient: The client handles operations for a particular directory. This includes creating or deleting that directory, as well as listing the files and subdirectories, and managing properties and metadata.
  • FileClient: The client handles operations for a particular file. This includes creating or deleting that file, as well as upload and download data and managing properties.

  These clients can be accessed by navigating down the client hierarchy, or instantiated directly using URLs to the resource (account, share, directory or file). For full details on the new API, please see the reference documentation.

• The copy file operation now returns a polling object that can be used to check the status of the operation, as well as abort the operation.

• The close_handles operation now return a polling object that can be used to check the status of the operation.

• Download operations now return a streaming object that can download data in multiple ways:

  • Iteration: The streamer is an iterable object that will download and yield the content in chunks. Only supports single threaded download.
  • content_as_bytes: Return the entire file content as bytes. Blocking operation that supports multi-threaded download.
  • content_as_text: Return the entire file content as decoded text. Blocking operation that supports multi-threaded download.
  • download_to_stream: Download the entire content to an open stream handle (e.g. an open file). Supports multi-threaded download.

• New underlying REST pipeline implementation, based on the new azure.core library.

• Client and pipeline configuration is now available via keyword arguments at both the client level, and per-operation. See reference documentation for a full list of optional configuration arguments.

• New error hierarchy:

  • All service errors will now use the base type: azure.core.exceptions.HttpResponseError
  • The are a couple of specific exception types derived from this base type for common error scenarios:
    • ResourceNotFoundError: The resource (e.g. queue, message) could not be found. Commonly a 404 status code.
    • ResourceExistsError: A resource conflict - commonly caused when attempting to create a resource that already exists.
    • ResourceModifiedError: The resource has been modified (e.g. overwritten) and therefore the current operation is in conflict. Alternatively this may be raised if a condition on the operation is not met.
    • ClientAuthenticationError: Authentication failed.

• Operation set_file_properties has been renamed to set_http_headers.

• Operations get_file_to_<output> have been replaced with download_file. See above for download output options.

• Operations create_file_from_<input> have been replace with upload_file.

• Operations get_share_acl and set_share_acl have been renamed to get_share_access_policy and set_share_access_policy.

• Operation set_share_properties has been renamed to set_share_quota.

• Operation snapshot_share has been renamed to create_snapshot.

• Operation copy_file has been renamed to copy_file_from_url.

• No longer have specific operations for get_metadata - use get_properties instead.

• No longer have specific operations for exists - use get_properties instead.

• Operation update_range has been renamed to upload_range.

Version 2.0.1:

• Updated dependency on azure-storage-common.

Version 2.0.0:

• Support for 2018-11-09 REST version. Please see our REST API documentation and blogs for information about the related added features.
• Added an option to get share stats in bytes.
• Added support for listing and closing file handles.

Version 1.4.0:

• azure-storage-nspkg is not installed anymore on Python 3 (PEP420-based namespace package)

Version 1.3.1:

• Fixed design flaw where get_file_to_* methods buffer entire file when max_connections is set to 1.

Version 1.3.0:

• Support for 2018-03-28 REST version. Please see our REST API documentation and blog for information about the related added features.

Version 1.2.0rc1:

• Support for 2017-11-09 REST version. Please see our REST API documentation and blog for information about the related added features.

Version 1.1.0:

• Support for 2017-07-29 REST version. Please see our REST API documentation and blogs for information about the related added features.
• Error message now contains the ErrorCode from the x-ms-error-code header value.

Version 1.0.0:

• The package has switched from Apache 2.0 to the MIT license.
• Fixed bug where get_file_to_* cannot get a single byte when start_range and end_range are both equal to 0.
• Metadata keys are now case-preserving when fetched from the service. Previously they were made lower-case by the library.