TechTips

Local Azure Storage Development with Azurite, Azure SDKs, and Azure Storage Explorer

Azurite, the local cross-platform Azure Storage emulator, just released support for HTTPS and OAuth, making our local Azure Storage development story complete. You can now do all of your Azure Storage development on your local machine, saving you time and money during all of your tight inner-loop cycles. Prior to the Azurite v3.7.0 release, you could not use any Bearer Token based authentication mechanism like what is provided with Azure Identity’s DefaultAzureCredential, because it requires both HTTPS and OAuth. Now that Azurite supports both, we can new up a Storage client the same way regardless of whether we’re pointing to Azurite or Azure.

In this post, I’ll show you the tools we have available and how to get everything setup.

Here are the local dev Azure Storage tools we have available:

  • Emulation: Azurite v3.7.0+: Cross-platform Azure Storage Emulator - a local process that adheres to the Azure Storage interfaces. Azurite V3 does not support Azure Tables yet. If you need Azure Tables, then use Azurite V2 or the Cosmos emulator. Table support in Azurite is coming soon. Follow along and contribute here: https://github.com/Azure/Azurite/projects/2
  • Development: Azure SDKs: Cross-platform, multi-language libraries that talk to either Azurite or Azure. We’ll use the new DefaultAzureCredential, which under the covers, has a chain of credential options and with the latest preview, it will use your Azure CLI credentials.
  • Management: Azure Storage Explorer: Cross-platform application that lets you view and manage Azure Storage with Azurite or Azure.

We’ll get to the nitty gritty details of getting everything setup in a minute. But in a nutshell, here’s what we’re going to do:

Local Certificate

  1. Create a local self-signed certificate
mkcert 127.0.0.1.pem

Azurite

  1. Start Azurite with HTTPS and OAuth Support
azurite --oauth basic --cert 127.0.0.1.pem --key 127.0.0.1-key.pem

Azure SDK

  1. Use Azure SDKs to connect to Azurite

You’ll notice here that we are using the Azurite HTTPS endpoint, and DefaultAzureCredential(), which automatically retrieves the appropriatly scoped Azure Storage token.

var client = new BlobContainerCient(
  new Uri("https://127.0.0.1:10000/devstoreaccount1/container-name"), 
  new DefaultAzureCredential()
);

Azure Storage Explorer

  1. Use Azure Storage Explorer to view the Azurite data

'Blobs in storage explorer'

Now, let’s go through each step that you need to complete to get this all setup.

Create an Azurite folder

Azurite needs a place to store its metadata and the data you send to it. You also need a place to store the certificate files we’ll create and it’s best they are in the same folder that you start Azurite.

  1. Create a folder, I like to put my Azurite files in c:\azurite
cd c:\
mkdir azurite
cd azurite

Local Certificate Setup

You need a local self-signed certificate, which is super easy to create with mkcert. You have other certificate options available and detailed instructions for those options can be found on the Azurite installation page.

  1. Install mkcert

The mkcert site has many installation methods, but I like Chocolately.

choco install mkcert
  1. Trust the mkcert RootCA.pem

This will add the RootCA created my mkcert to your Trusted Root Certificates.

mkcert -install
  1. Create certificate
mkcert 127.0.0.1

This will create the certificates and output the following:

C:\azurite>mkcert 127.0.0.1
Using the local CA at "C:\Users\Jon\AppData\Local\mkcert" ✨

Created a new certificate valid for the following names 📜
 - "127.0.0.1"

The certificate is at "./127.0.0.1.pem" and the key at "./127.0.0.1-key.pem" ✅

Azurite Setup

  1. Install Azurite

We’ll use npm here, but you have other options listed on the Azurite install page.

npm install azurite
  1. Start Azurite

Run the azurite command and turn on OAuth with --oauth basic and turn on HTTPS with the --cert and --key options.

azurite --oauth basic --cert 127.0.0.1.pem --key 127.0.0.1-key.pem

That will output the following:

Azurite Blob service is starting at https://127.0.0.1:10000
Azurite Blob service is successfully listening at https://127.0.0.1:10000
Azurite Queue service is starting at https://127.0.0.1:10001
Azurite Queue service is successfully listening at https://127.0.0.1:10001

Azurite is now running.

Azure CLI Setup

To avoid having to create service principals for local development, we’ll install the Azure CLI and login.

  1. Install the Azure CLI https://aka.ms/azcliget
  2. Run az login to login to the Azure CLI.

NOTE: You’ll need to install the latest Azure Identity preview for Azure CLI authentication integratino with the Azure SDKs to work. See https://aka.ms/azsdk/releases for the latest SDK versions.

Azure SDK Setup

Now, we’ll run some code that hits our Azurite HTTPS endpoints. All of the following code can be found here: https://github.com/jongio/azure-storage-azurite-azuresdks-storage-explorer

NOTE: You will need the Azure Identity preview versions for this to work with Azure CLI Credentials, see https://aka.ms/azsdk/releases for the latest SDK versions.

var blobHost = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("AZURE_STORAGE_BLOB_HOST");  // 127.0.0.1:10000
var account = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("AZURE_STORAGE_ACCOUNT"); // devstoreaccount1
var container = Environment.GetEnvironmentVariable("AZURE_STORAGE_CONTAINER");
var emulator = account == "devstoreaccount1";
var blobBaseUri = $"https://{(emulator ? $"{blobHost}/{account}" : $"{account}.{blobHost}")}/";
var blobContainerUri = $"{blobBaseUri}{container}";

// Generate random string for blob content and file name
var content = Guid.NewGuid().ToString("n").Substring(0, 8);
var file = $"{content}.txt";

// With container uri and DefaultAzureCredential
// Since we are using the Azure Identity preview version, DefaultAzureCredential will use your Azure CLI token.
var client = new BlobContainerClient(new Uri(blobContainerUri), new DefaultAzureCredential());

// Create container
await client.CreateIfNotExistsAsync();

// Get content stream
using var stream = new MemoryStream(Encoding.ASCII.GetBytes(content));

// Upload blob
await client.UploadBlobAsync(file, stream);

When you run the above code, a blob will be added to the container, and when you move to production you just need to update the environment variables to point to Azure instead of Azurite.

Azure Storage Explorer Setup

Now, we want to view the blob we just created. That’s easy with Storage Explorer, but we have to take an extra few steps to add the Azurite HTTPS endpoints.

  1. Install Azure Storage Explorer

Go to the Azure Storage Explorer install page and install it.

  1. Import SSL Certificate

We need to tell Azure Storage Explorer to use the mkcert RootCA.pem file.

Run this command to find the mkcert RootCA.pem file

mkcert -CAROOT

Mine is located here:

C:\Users\Jon\AppData\Local\mkcert

In Storage Explorer, select Edit -> SSL Certificates --> Import Certificates

'Import certificates'

Find the mkcert RootCA file at the location you got from mkcert -CAROOT.

'Find RootCA'

Restart Storage Explorer

'Restart storage explorer'

  1. Add Azurite HTTPS Endpoint
  • In Storage Explorer, right-click on “Local & Attached -> Storage Accounts” and select “Connect to Azure Storage”

'Connect to Azure storage'

  • Select “Attach to local emulator”

'Attach to local emulator'

  • Select “https” for Protocol and give it a name

'HTTPS selection'

  • Click Next and then click Connect.

You will now see Azurite in your list of connections and when you expand it, you will see the container and blobs that you created.

'Blobs in storage explorer'

Summary

In this post, we looked at all the local tools you need for a fast and free inner-loop Azure Storage dev cycle. We setup Azurite, used the Azure SDKs to create blobs, and viewed them with Azure Storage Explorer.

I hope this helps you out in your disconnected Azure dev exp.

Jon