Searching Files in Blob Container

Question

Hi,

I am looking for a way to search Blob container for files, including the sub-folders.
In the Azure Storage Explorer the search box (Search by prefix) searches only the currently opened dir and not the entire Blob content.

Currently I'm using Filezilla Pro as a temp solution. The search there goes over all the sub dirs each time so it works well.

Is there a way to perform search that includes sub dirs with native MS application (without adding Azure Cognitive Search for indexing)?

Thanks!

Answer 1

@Miki
If you know which directory to search you can include that is part of the prefix folder1/subfolder2/. Unfortunately you cannot search all folders in the portal or in Storage Explorer nor do wild card searches work. Blob service only supports filtering by blob prefix and not by suffix. Someone has already opened an existing feedback item for this, feel free to comment and follow for any updates.

One method which might work for you is listing all the blobs in PowerShell with Get-AzStorageBlob and use that to do a wildcard search for the file. See the below example:

Get-AzStorageBlob -Context $ctx -Container $containerName | Where-Object {$_.Name -like "*filename*"}  

Hope this helps! Let me know if you have further questions or issues and I will be happy to assist.

-------------------------------

Please don’t forget to "Accept the answer" and “up-vote” wherever the information provided helps you, this can be beneficial to other community members.

Answer 2

its 2024, is there any solution for this?

Answer 3

I found this Microsoft link that describes how to setup indexing of Blob files to make it searchable but seems very convoluted. I've not tried this myself but at least its something. I've been using Azure Blob storage since late 2018 and still surprised that there is still no normal search function for Blob Storage. Why!!!

https://learn.microsoft.com/en-us/azure/search/search-howto-indexing-azure-blob-storage

Answer 4

Hi Microsoft Team,

Is there any plan to enable searching capabilities on Azure Blob/ADLS Gen2 containers.

If we have millions of files stored in different directories/sub-directories in a container, in that scenarios, it's very difficult to identify location of file.

Please advise if this feature is already in pipeline or not.